‘Tis the season to be many things. Jolly and merry come to mind. As do grateful and joyful. But so do stressed, guilt-ridden, depressed, cold, broke, exhausted, beleaguered, frenetic, and late. And that’s just on the home front! Variations on these themes reign at work as well. OK, so how do you ensure the happy adjectives prevail? Spoiler alert: These are going to sound awfully familiar!
Remember what it was like to get your first eyeglasses? Or the revelation provided regularly when the eye doctor replaces the blurry eye chart with stunning clarity by sliding that big old refractor in front of your eyes? My mother thought the world looked better when she couldn’t see all the depressing details. The rest of us love crystal clear vision. At least I think so! But what’s interesting is that until you visit the eye doctor and suddenly see with a new level of clarity, you don’t know what you’ve been missing. There is no way of knowing how blurry your world is. Most people see what they see and pretty much assume they see what everybody else sees.
My clients represent for profits and non-profits from 38 industries and there is one incredibly costly mistake they all make repeatedly. I see it in large organizations about to embark on major change with many decisions of consequence. I see it in smaller organizations when the CEO hopes to make a quick decision in a weekly staff meeting. It occurs at the executive level as well as every other level in the organization. And yet, it is so simple to fix.
The purpose of annual reviews is ostensibly to improve performance, right? Then why don’t they? Why do managers and employees alike dread them? And why on earth do they happen only once a year? I can think of only one performance review I ever had in decades working in Corporate America that actually helped me improve. That taught me something about myself that I didn’t know. That accomplished something other than:
I have a scale that tells me what I weighed yesterday. That makes about as much sense as looking at yesterday’s stock market performance to determine what it will do today. Almost as senseless as developing a product that caters to customer needs of yesterday. Not that my weight fluctuates as much as market interests! Are you using your rearview mirror to navigate?
Clarity empowers. Do you even need to be convinced? Let’s start with only one dimension of clarity – Clarity of Purpose. Isn’t it obvious that when people know exactly what they need to achieve, they are more likely to be successful? If they know what “done” looks like? Let me give you a few examples where a lack of clarity undermined results, productivity, and morale.
Too often I encounter leaders and employees struggling to make decisions. This is especially common with group decisions. Typically, the group is considering two or three alternatives with lists of pros and cons for each. They go around and around and just can’t seem to reach a conclusion. So here is my advice. 1. SOAR through Decisions with a disciplined process. Follow my ‘SOAR through Decisions‘ process. If you haven’t been SOARing, you will probably have to move backwards to move forward. Most likely you are stuck on Step #3 because you skipped Step #2, and maybe even Step #1. A disciplined decision process is especially valuable for group decisions. Even groups of two. It gets everyone on the same page.
Email consumes approximately 23% of the average employee’s workday. Or put another way, a typical employee sends and receives 112 messages each day. And the vast majority of that email is internal. This means the average employee is spending almost two hours a day writing messages that create no value for which customers are willing to pay. But here is the good news. It doesn’t have to be this way. Internal email is entirely within the control of the company. You don’t have to waste all that time! If you cut that 23% in half, which is totally possible, that’s like increasing the size of your workforce by more than 10%. Alternatively, it would allow each employee to go home an hour earlier. How can you not take such an opportunity seriously?
Google Maps. Voice Control. 330 Amsterdam Avenue, NYC. Drive. Three hours later Google Maps tells me I’m there. In the middle of a busy street! No parking anywhere to be seen. Clearly, I am not there! And I might not actually get there for another hour because I don’t know where to park and I have no navigator to help me. Had I selected Transit instead of Drive, Google would have shown me how to walk out of my office, gotten me to various trains and buses, and left me walking in the front door of my destination. Arrived and ready. Why doesn’t that happen with Drive? Why doesn’t Google leave me in a parking space or garage with walking or transit directions to my real destination? Why would I want to be left in the middle of a street in New York City? Are you leaving your customers, employees, and co-workers stranded in the middle of the road, undeniably short of their destinations?
I don’t make a lot of mistakes, but I shouldn’t admit that. Or be proud of it. Or even think about it. Because avoiding mistakes sucks up a tremendous amount of time. And most mistakes aren’t worth avoiding. They just aren’t important enough. A few weeks ago I sent out a Clarity Tip to my Clarity App. The banner had a typo, as did the tip itself. I don’t make a lot of mistakes like this, but, yes, I was in a hurry. When people contacted me to point out the mistakes, my response was: