I’ve written numerous articles about clarity blindness and the general inability of people to recognize the ubiquity of disclarity surrounding us. Today I want to share four critical reasons why you need to make clarity a priority. Clarity represents a huge opportunity whether you care about profits, productivity, employee engagement, confidence, commitment, conflict, or politics.

1. Do you want to improve productivity? Start with clarity.

Without clarity, we walk around the block to get next door. We waste time and energy. The opportunity for improvement is enormous.

When people know precisely what they need to accomplish, how, when, and with whom, they can ‘get in the zone’ and make great strides. Without that level of clarity, they wander in, fish around, double back, redo, procrastinate, over commit, wait for others, polish and perfect, and generally struggle to make progress.

This is true for you and all your employees. Everyone is more productive when they are super clear about the next immediate goal and the steps needed to achieve it. You need to learn how to create that level of clarity on the fly anytime you don’t have it. Creating uncommon clarity is a critical and uncommon skill. And requires pausing before you jump in.

If you have people working for you, you need to be sure they are operating with uncommon clarity too. This doesn’t mean you figure out everything for them. It does mean you encourage them to pause, ask questions, and take stock before diving into any task they can’t perform with excellence and speed. It also means you encourage them to develop their ability to create clarity-on-the-fly. If your skills are strong, you can coach them. If not, my latest book, The Clarity Papers, is a great place to start.

2. Do you want to improve profits? Start with clarity.

Profits stem primarily from strategic focus, smart decisions, and productivity. We’ve already talked about productivity. Let’s consider strategic focus and smart decisions.

Strategic focus is all about clarity. What will you do, what won’t you do, and for whom. You need clear answers to these questions so you can ensure all your resources are aligned behind the same goals. For more information, read The Importance of Strategic Focus.

Smart decisions are equally important, both the decisions that establish a smart and clear strategic focus and the daily decisions required to maintain alignment and execute effectively. Despite the incredible importance and frequency of decision making, few organizations follow a clear, rational process that produces smart decisions efficiently and with strong buy-in. If you and your colleagues can’t enumerate the same, familiar steps of decision making, you don’t have a decision-making process. And if you don’t have a decision-making process that everyone understands, you don’t have anything approaching clarity. Instead, you are wandering through decisions. And if you are wandering through decisions, the quality of your decisions suffers while you waste time and fail to synchronize the brainpower of your team. Start with clarity. In this case, clarity of process.

3. Do you want to improve buy-in and commitment? Start with clarity.

People accept and commit to decisions and goals when they see evidence of a clear, transparent, and logical decision-making process. The clarity, transparency, rationality, and existence of an actual decision-making process allow them to:

• Understand what is being decided, how, and why.
• Trust that the decision makers are informed, fair, and acting in the best interests of the organization.
• Avoid being blindsided by something that affects them personally or professionally.
• Know how to speak up if they believe the process has gone awry, if not to affect the immediate decision, at least to prevent future flawed decisions.

Create this kind of uncommon clarity and your employees will even defend and commit to your bad decisions!

4. Do you want to improve confidence? Start with clarity.

Clarity creates confidence. Uncommon clarity creates even more confidence. The clearer you are about your objectives, limitations, responsibilities, options, methods, and knowledge, the more confident you will feel.

Even clarity about your fears will increase your confidence. Many people don’t like to talk about what scares them. Especially men. Especially in the workplace. However, if you get the risks and fears on the table, even if only on your “private table,” especially the worse case scenarios, you can deal with them, mitigate them, and replace vague, haunting horrors with rational plans. There is nothing like clarity for boosting confidence.

The value of confidence ought to be obvious. Confidence lets you move more quickly, more intentionally, and more calmly. Confidence makes it easier to engage with others and ferret out their priorities, concerns, and fears. Confidence lets you speak with volume and authority. Confidence also helps you listen, learn, and change your mind. In short, confidence unleashes talent. If you want the benefits of greater confidence, learn to create uncommon clarity. If you want your employees to benefit from greater confidence, help them achieve uncommon clarity.

Clarity must come first if you care about profits, productivity, buy-in, confidence, and more. Creating clarity is the #1 responsibility of management and a critical skill for any employee. I’ve written over 500 articles on the subject and four books. There is simply no excuse for walking around the block to get next door in today’s competitive world of business.

This article first appeared on Forbes, February 22nd, 2018.