I recently had the pleasure of joining marketing strategy expert Linda J. Popky, president of Leverage2Market® Associates, on the Marketing Thought Leadership podcast. Our topic, “Let Me Make That Perfectly Clear: How Clarity Ties to Organizational Success,” covers some of my favorite topics and perennial questions:

• What is clarity?
• Why is it so uncommonly found in today’s organizations?
• How can clarity improve productivity, performance, and employee engagement?
• Why is it so important for marketers and other knowledge workers?

Listen to this podcast.

Podcast  Transcript:

Announcer: Welcome to Marketing Thought Leadership, the podcast that offers insightful discussions on thought-provoking marketing topics. Here’s the host of our show, marketing consultant, speaker, author and educator, and the President of Leverage2Market Associates, Linda Popky.

Linda: Hi, this is Linda Popky and welcome to our latest episode of Marketing Thought Leadership. I’m here today with Ann Latham. Ann is the founder of the Boston area consulting firm, Uncommon Clarity. Her clients represent more than 40 industries and they range from for-profit organizations, such as Boeing, Medtronic, and Hitachi, to nonprofit organizations as diverse as Public Television and Smith College. Ann is considered an expert in strategic clarity and the productivity, performance, and commitment that follow. She’s also the author of “The Clarity Papers – The Executive’s Guide to Clear Thinking and Better, Faster Results,” plus three other books. She’s been interviewed and written about in 85 different media sources, including The New York Times, Bloomberg, Business Week, Forbes, MSNBC.com, etc. She is also an expert blogger for Forbes.com. Welcome Ann.

Ann: Hi Linda, thank you. How are you?

Linda: Good. So, let’s get right to the chase here. You call your company Uncommon Clarity®.

Ann: Yes.

Linda: How did you get to that? What was the clarity that allowed you to name your company?

Ann: It’s a great story. When I was working in my corporate job, before I quit, I wanted to become an independent consultant but before I did that, I asked a whole bunch of people I worked with, people around me, above me, people I worked for, everyone I could think of, what is it that I do exceedingly well that’s most uncommon. I got great responses. I got a lot of people giving me different answers but when I boiled them all down together, it came out to uncommon clarity. It was everything from being able to take in large quantities of information and cut to the chase to bringing focus to important things and moving things forward quickly. So I, of course, checked the URL and it was available. So, it was a deal.

Linda: That’s great. Okay. Tell me, what do you mean by clarity? It should be clear but it’s not because I think we have different ideas about what clarity might be so how are you defining clarity?

Ann: That’s a great question because the word clarity itself is incredibly unclear.

Linda: There you go.

Ann: No one knows what it means. No one really understands. If you think about it, if you think of a continuum with uncommon clarity, on one end – super clarity, and on the other end, what I call ‘disclarity,’ you’ve got this really wide spectrum and when people say, “Well, you know, I could be a little clearer,” they don’t have any clue where they are floating around in the middle of that spectrum or what the reality is around them in terms of how clear things are. So to me, what-

Linda: What do you mean by disclarity?

Ann: Disclarity is the absence of clarity, the absolute lack of clarity. People talk about a lack of clarity and it sounds like a little something is missing. What I’m maintaining is a lot of time, there’s a lot of clarity missing. I would rather use another word and that’s why I coined the term, disclarity.

Linda: Disclarity, but give us an example. What’s a great example of disclarity?

Ann: Oh man, there are just tons of them. I mean, just think about sitting in a meeting where no one knows exactly why they’re there, what they’re trying to accomplish, and they walk out at the end and are not sure anything was done. That’s a perfect example of disclarity. Or, take a situation where you’re trying to make a decision and you go round and round, you make the same decision over and over again, you revisit the decision. There are countless examples of decisions that are incredibly unclear.
The truth is we are not wired to be clear. Disclarity is our natural state. If you think about it, our natural state is to open our mouths and be helpful.

Linda: Right, right.

Ann: Which means you can run in 10 different directions, 100 different directions. Anything you say, I can react to in countless ways because I’m trying to help, I’m trying to solve your problem, I’m trying to ask questions, and if you’re in a group, they will all run in additional directions as well.
We’re wired to open our mouths and talk, and not to zero in and make things super specific. So clarity in my book is about knowing exactly what you’re trying to accomplish, why, how, and with whom. It’s pretty simple.

Linda: Wow. It’s pretty simple but it’s hard to do.

Ann: It’s very hard to do, especially when you’re wired to be very unclear.

Linda: Right. How does that impact marketing in terms of clarity? Can you be too focused? Because I think sometimes we want to be clear, but we want to be a little bit broader than that, so talk about how clarity works in marketing.

Ann: All right. This might take a second here, when you think about the organization, where is the greatest clarity – it’s on a production floor.

Linda: Right.

Ann: It’s where people are moving physical objects around and the organization has spent a good deal of time trying to determine what’s the best way to move these parts and products through the building and get them out the door, and if you’re not building parts and products, well then, you’re moving paperwork, you’re processing orders, you’re moving something through your production line. That’s the area that’s the clearest. It’s also the area that’s the most efficient because everyone’s been working on streamlining that for decades. Makes sense?

Linda: Right.

Ann: You’ve got this super clarity, or the best clarity in the organization, along the production line. The other area in which we have clarity in most organizations, not all of them and to varying degrees is, what I call organizational clarity, which is your top down, what’s your strategy, what are your goals, usually, those are defined in terms of annual goals, what are your job descriptions and these things are all defined in policies and procedures and all that kind of thing. So you have this top-down organizational clarity and you’ve got this production line clarity. That’s about it.

In between, you have a multitude of people, especially knowledge workers, especially office people, especially marketing type people who don’t have firm fixed processes. They’re not nearly as clear about what they’re trying to accomplish and with whom and how. They might understand their overall annual goals but on a daily basis, you know like, what do I have to get done in the next hour, what’s going to be different by the end of this day. That’s where a lot of the disclarity comes in and people need to be able to recognize when they don’t have enough clarity and create that clarity on the fly.

Linda: Did you find that people react … When you try to give them clarity, do they like it? You said the natural state is to not be clear. Is there sort of a push back? It’s like, “Oh, I don’t know if I want you to nail me down to that specific.”

Ann: No. Actually, I mean, just because their natural state is unclear doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate it when things get clear because when you think about it, think about when you are absolutely your most productive, when you are energized and when you are most successful. That’s when you know exactly, “Oh, I need to get this done by the end of the hour and this is how I can get there and this is who I need to talk to,” and you know why you’re doing it. That’s when you’re most productive, isn’t it?

Linda: Absolutely. Yep.

Ann: Yeah. People like that because it gives them, all of sudden they have this sense of direction, this confidence, this energy because they can get something done. People like to get stuff done.

Linda: Right, right. You know, I think from a marketing perspective, I think it’s much easier once we know exactly what the message is, who we’re talking to, what we’re trying to accomplish. Too often, we go out and we try to execute without knowing all that. I think it’s when you have that clarity, all of a sudden the path becomes much simpler and much more direct.

Ann: That’s right. Yeah. If you don’t have that clarity around who is your audience, what’s your message, then you all go around in circles arguing about different things you can do, different ways to approach it, and you’re not even driving towards the same destination.

Linda: Right.

Ann: That’s a perfect example of the kind of wandering and the slow path to get … like I would say that without clarity, you go around the block to go next door.

Linda: Right, right. Around in circles a few times, yep.

Ann: Let me give you another example of when people appreciate clarity, how I know they like it. I’m tuning in on an executive team meeting and I’m listening. It’s not my turn to talk. I’m just supposed to sit there and shut up. I can’t stand it. After five minutes and I stopped them and say, “Do you realize you’re talking about five different decisions and two different plans?” They just looked at me with dagger eyes. It’s like, “How dare you?” Because they were focused, they were smart, they were working hard, they were all well behaved, everyone thought they were making great progress. They couldn’t believe it, that I interrupted them but when I then enumerated the five different decisions and the two different plans that they were talking about simultaneously, suddenly the light bulbs go on and they go, “Whoa, okay, you’re right.” Then suddenly, they can make all five of those decisions in the right order in about 10 minutes, move onto the next thing. So a meeting that would’ve gone on for a full hour and probably had to be rescheduled, was over in 20 minutes.

Linda: Got it.

Ann: Once you get that level of clarity and you go, “Oh, that’s what we need to do,” everyone’s excited to march forward, move ahead and get it done.

Linda: This is so important and it makes people more productive, more energized. Why is it so uncommon?

Ann: The main thing is because they don’t see the lack of clarity. They’re not used to this way of dealing with things. For instance, if you think about a lot of the way people talk in business and talk about their jobs, they spend a lot of time reviewing and reporting and discussing and updating, right? Those pretty familiar words?

Linda: Yep.

Ann: Yeah, and those are what I call treadmill verbs, because there’s no destination. There’s no way to know when you’re done. You can report forever, you can review forever, you can discuss forever. However, if you say forget it, I’m not going to use that language at all and start talking in terms of destination verbs, then you have to use words like decide, list, plan, authorize, confirm. There are only six of them that constitute actual progress. Everything else is more treadmill style talk and talk and talk.

Linda: Treadmill style, I love that because you keep going and going but you never get anywhere. Yeah.

Ann: Exactly.

Linda: You use a lot of energy when you’re on the treadmill. Yeah.

Ann: That’s right. I’ll let you say some more.

Linda: Right, exactly. If we increase clarity in organizations, what kind of benefits are we going to get?

Ann: Well, the first benefit, I think one of the most obvious ones, is productivity. Instead of wandering around, instead of making decisions over and over, instead of sitting in worthless meetings, you can dramatically increase your productivity. Second to that is performance. You can make better decisions if you’re clear about what decision you’re making and get everyone on the same page and you have a process for making a decision, you’ll make better decisions. A really good-

Linda: That makes sense.

Ann: This decision example is imagine you walk into a room and you tell a bunch of people, “Gee, I’m thinking of buying a car?” How do they respond? What are some of the things people say?

Linda: Well, what kind of car are you interested in or gee, that’s nice. Are you looking for input on the car? I mean, that’s kind of a broad statement, yeah.

Ann: Yeah, but people do it all the time. You say, “Gee, I’m thinking of buying a car,” now, it doesn’t mean they’ve decided even to buy a car.

Linda: Right.

Ann: You don’t know that but someone will jump in and say, “Oh gee, you should get a Tesla.”

Linda: Right.

Ann: Here’s this person who hasn’t necessarily even decided to buy a car and he’s getting advice on buying a Tesla. That’s a perfect example of this kind of wandering in. So anyway, you will make a better decision if you agree on what decision you’re making first. Are you going to buy a car or not? Are you deciding what kind of car? Then, you’ll get everyone on the same page. You focus all that brain power. You break it down into logical steps instead of conflating the four steps of decision making into one and you’ll get better results.

Linda: That makes sense.

Ann: The third huge benefit, you can go by a bunch of names, you can say, “Well, we can improve employee engagement.” I like to use the word commitment but it’s about freeing people up to be able to contribute their best because at any given moment, especially if you’re working in a group, if you are clear about what the other person is going after and you know what step we’re on, then you know when to open your mouth and contribute and how to contribute.

Linda: That makes sense.

Ann: When people are able to contribute effectively, it really amps up their energy and their determination and their motivation and all those…and their commitment. All those things that help create employees who will knock down walls to get things done.

Linda: That makes sense. So, we’ve been talking here with Ann Latham, who is the founder of the consulting firm Uncommon Clarity®. Also, the author of “The Clarity Papers – The Executive’s Guide to Clear Thinking and Better, Faster Results.” Ann, if people wanted to get clarity on working with you or finding out more about you, where would they go?

Ann: There’s two places I recommend. One is my website, UncommonClarity.com and the other is my brand new book that came out in January, “The Clarity Papers.” I recommend you check them both out and “The Clarity Papers” is available on Amazon and, of course, other outlets as well.

Linda: Fantastic. Any just last minute thoughts about one thing we could do to put clarity in our lives just in general? Something we could do every day.

Ann: Probably the first thing you can do that would improve everything you do is stop and ask, “What are we trying to accomplish?”

Linda: That’s a good point.

Ann: “What specifically are we trying to accomplish in the next hour, in the next day, in the next week,” whatever you’re talking about, whatever the situation. Everyone should get on that same page and even if you’re alone and working by yourself at your desk, instead of thinking, “Well gee, I should be working on this. Wait a minute. What needs to be done at the end this next hour?”

Linda: That’s perfect. Thank you so much. We’ve been here with Ann Latham. Again she’s the founder of the consulting firm, Uncommon Clarity® and the author of “The Clarity Papers – The Executive’s Guide to Clear Thinking and Better, Faster Results.” Thank you, Ann, for being clear on what we need to do next in getting some clarity.

Ann: Thank you, Linda. It’s been fun.

Linda: Okay. This is Linda Popky. Until next time, thank you for listening to Marketing Thought Leadership.

Announcer: We hope you enjoyed this edition of Marketing Thought Leadership, brought to you by Leverage2Market Associates. If you’d like to find out how powerful marketing results can transform your organization, contact us at www.leverage2market.com.