Clarity. If you’ve ever watched a lean assembly line, you’ve seen it. Or a busy short-order cafe. The line up process of a large well-run marathon. Even a Montessori classroom where thirty pre-schoolers excitedly and respectfully pursue as many as thirty independent activities.
If you’ve read many of my newsletters and other publications, you know I stand for respect, fairness, listening, and finding common ground. Perhaps you remember the article where I wrote that 95% of conflict is caused by a lack of clarity. And maybe you wondered about the other 5%.
If you make decisions by consensus, you waste a lot of time. But if you make decisions without sufficient involvement, you won’t gain the cooperation and commitment you need for subsequent steps and successful implementation. How do naturally clear leaders thread this needle? They consciously, or intuitively, follow these seven rules:
If your organization is at all on top of things, your production line is lean and mean. The processes used to produce and deliver value for which customers are willing to pay are well-defined and reliable. You measure productivity in widgets per hour and expect 99.9% uptime and nearly zero defects. Priorities are clear. Routines are well-established. Roles are well-understood. Employees know exactly what to do, how, how well, with whom, when, and in what order. When necessary, they make decisions with confidence and without delay because they understand the objectives, options, and trade-offs, they have appropriate authority, and they know where to turn for additional information. In other words, they are Radically Clear. As a result, they are ultra productive. This is the region marked by the letter A on the graphic. Now consider what happens outside that region. As you move away from production and into ‘The B Zone,’ clarity takes a dive! And with it goes productivity!
Strategies fail more often than they succeed. Occasionally it’s because they are stupid strategies. Most of the times the cause is a lack of clarity – a lack of specificity about where you are headed, how you will get there, and what must change. Consider these examples of typical failures:
Strategic planning isn’t rocket science, but that doesn’t mean most organizations do it well! Here are the most common mistakes I see: 1. You do strategic planning because the calendar tells you it is time. Why? What does the calendar know about your business and changes in your market? 2. You haven’t done strategic planning in several years and think it would probably be a good idea because you know you are supposed to do it more often than you have been. If you are relying on external triggers like peer pressure and calendars, you are out of touch and don’t understand the purpose of strategic planning.
I’ve watched many non-profits struggle because they have the wrong people on their boards. Even conscientious organizations with lists of criteria used to carefully recruit qualifying board members usually get it wrong. Yes, you need diversity. At the very least, that likely means you need to consider race, gender, and age. Depending on your focus, you may need diversity of experience and socio-economic representation as well. If you are a member organization, the diversity of your board must reflect your member base or desired member base.
When my parents died, their wills suggested an onerous process for dividing belongings among 5 siblings. But at least they provided a process! They also indicated we were welcome to come up with a better process, if we so desired. My parents, who probably had something to do with my clarity(!), clearly knew the importance of having a process! As executrix, I gladly proposed a better process. Being me, I’m pretty sure I would have done so regardless of whether or not it was my responsibility. So I wrote up a simple process, explained it to all siblings, asked for opinions, and then got their signatures to confirm agreement before anyone began claiming anything. The process worked smoothly. Success depended only on the thought invested by each sibling into their desires and needs. Everyone left with a combination of cherished and practical items. There was one opportunity for dissension, however.
Did you know that almost no one made the word ‘priority’ plural before the 1950s? Having multiple priorities probably made about as much sense as describing something as ‘very unique.’ Something is either unique or it isn’t. And something is either the priority or it isn’t. Makes sense to me! Once you have two priorities, what is the priority? And once you have two, why can’t you have three? How about four? Where is the line?
A liquor store in Atlanta is refusing to sell Boston Lager until after the Super Bowl. No harm done. Sam Adams Brewery and the liquor store both get great publicity from that one and people have their fun. The New England beers will be back on the shelf in a few more days. Meanwhile, the Internet is awash in football analogies and Super Bowl mentions in order to ride the excitement and generate search engine hits. But sport analogies aren’t just limited to play-off season. They permeate business talk. You’re supposed to walk onto the court with your head held high, leave it all on the field, and dominate. The goal is to inspire competitiveness, perseverance, and confidence. To tap the inner warrior and the calm, but fierce, leader. And, of course, the goal is to win.