The problem is, things where I think I have the largest impact are mostly "fluffy" - I advise, guide, and educate colleagues all throughout the org (especially leaders), but I don't have direct reports or a budget to manage. I'm de-facto an executive advisor with a great (compared to my environment of course) understanding in math/statistics/data science and the fincrime application field. I can easily relate to SVPs/directors and make them understand cost/risk tradeoffs. The good ol' "analytics translator", with now enough experience and projects under the belt to see where things are going. Been here, done that.

I'm fairly certain though that a few managers around flagged me as a slacker, because I don't really produce tangible outputs like code or documents or "drive meetings", just define desirable outcomes and steer/mentor others. And don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly the type that eagerly rolls up its sleeves in the general incompetence to power through 70+h work weeks and be the "one-man-army" that rock-stars whatever project you throw at them. I'm a lot past that phase in my career, I'm just not interested in doing that type of work anymore, and haven't been really done it in the last 4-5 years apart from sporadic self-contained prototypes or one-of ad-hoc analyses. I want to focus on high-level thinking, innovation, and leadership. A great number of my peer ICs see me as a role model and find my talks/way to relate to senior management inspiring. So I'm probably not just coming up with all of this myself, or I'm just naturally good at convincing people: in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king after all.

I'm now getting hard-pressed to formulate concrete goals/deliveries as apparently just being accountable for successful outcomes is not enough. Ideally, I'd measure my impact through org-wide metrics, but it's hard to attribute specific results to my efforts as someone with a well-defined reporting line would. These concrete tasks management all talks about are just not fulfilling, and make me feel like I'm wasting my potential and expertise. This "achieve impact through others" that I feel the bread and butter when you transition to more experienced levels is seen as not enough (if not outright "stealing impact"), and has to be supplemented by "things you actually do". I like my current (of course self-defined) advisor role, but I just don't know how to measure impact and state concrete goals/deliveries a way that doesn't make me lose my mind. Maybe I'm just suffering from an identity crisis where I'm not really an IC but also not a PM.

I'm interested to hear from others who have been in a similar career trajectory and/or got experienced similar challenges.