A second snowstorm in less than a week forced many Boston companies into a second costly closure.

The next day, while the CEO of one of those companies and I were discussing the value of organizational clarity, she raised a perfect example. The employee in charge of closures had struggled massively the day before. “Should we or shouldn’t we close?” His head was filled with conflicting thoughts: trucks on clogged streets, snow falling an inch an hour, people waiting for deliveries, and a painful backlog from the previous snow days, to name just a few. He agonized and agonized. In the end, he had to come to the CEO for a decision.

The CEO responded with one word: “Safety.” The same answer she would have given the week before and would be prepared to give with the third and subsequent storms.

Suddenly the decision was easy. But in the meantime, this single decision sucked up several employee hours, created significant stress, and left the CEO wondering why otherwise capable employees are so often crippled by decisions.

Why does this happen? Why couldn’t this employee see that safety must reign?

The culprit is a lack of clarity. People struggle with decisions because they fail to make critical distinctions. In this case, the employee failed to distinguish between the:

1. State of affairs (e.g., the forecast, snow clogged streets, backlog from previous closures)
2. Objectives (e.g., priorities, constraints and other decision criteria such as safety, deadlines, costs)
3. Alternatives (e.g., open and close, but also open late, close partially, etc.)

Without these distinctions, dozens of thoughts swirled in his head with the intensity of a blizzard:

• The mess comprising the current state buried the simpler assessment of objectives and decision criteria.
• The pressure of the decision brought open vs. close to the forefront, pushing that assessment of objectives even farther into the background.

No wonder he couldn’t decide!

But make these distinctions and the answers come easily. Most employees will do remarkably well if asked one step at a time to:

1. Describe the current State and needed decision.
2. List Objectives – possible decision criteria – and pick the most important.
3. Generate multiple Alternatives and choose the best.
4. Evaluate the Risks of the most promising alternative.

Imagine if your employees automatically made these distinctions and were able to SOAR through decisions.

They wouldn’t have to come to you so often. They wouldn’t wander around interrupting others in search of persuasive insights. They could help each other process information and draw conclusions efficiently and effectively by replacing blizzards of thoughts and concerns with pointed questions such as: “What criteria do you think we should use to make this decision?”

Suddenly your best employees are awesome and everyone else is a lot sharper! Stress would decline and productivity would soar as well.

You’d be amazed. I know because I’ve helped numerous organizations attain this level of shared clarity. I love watching CEOs drop their jaws the first time they witness their employees using distinctions like these to help each other answer the right questions in the right order.

For more information on how to SOAR through decisions and other critical distinctions, download my Clarity App from the iTunes Store. In the meantime, here is the one question that you and your employees should begin practicing every single day:

What are our objectives – the criteria, limitations, and priorities that should govern this decision?

Shared clarity is the productivity opportunity of our times. This is especially true for organizations that have already used lean techniques to streamline the processing of physical objects. It is time to streamline the processing of ideas and information. And shared clarity is the answer. It provides the framework that ensures employees get on the same page and work together to answer the right questions in the right order.

As my yoga teacher always says, “In the beginning, the benefits may appear quite small, but if you practice regularly, the results will be truly magnificent!”