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What Is Lack of Clarity Costing You?

By June 17, 2016February 14th, 2019Articles, Leadership
Word "clarity" viewed from a glasses.

Word “clarity” viewed from a glasses.

“It’s a lack of clarity that creates chaos and frustration. Those emotions are poison to any living goal.” ~ Steve Maraboli

What are you lacking clarity on that if you had would make the world of difference?

If you had to read the sentence twice that’s good!

Clarity is the quality of being clear, in particular: the quality of being coherent and intelligible according to dictionary meaning. Our lives are so busy, chaotic and often reactive which can cause clarity to be a casualty of how we react to this. It gets lost in the sea of how we operate in business, often reactive and without thought to what we are trying to achieve. We just ‘do’.

Without clarity you can feel lost, unmotivated and disempowered. The lack of clarity is a great strategy for procrastination too. It fuels it like dry wood to a fire.

When I went to see Ben Roberts-Smith, VC, MC speak last month on leadership at a business breakfast, one of the key points he highlighted in the success of some very intense army operations was the power of clarity. “When you’re under gun fire from the enemy you don’t have time to ask your superior if you should go left or right,” he says. He went on to explain the task force understands the operation or the mission and there may be five different plans to achieve that mission but they have absolute clarity on what we need to do and are empowered to make decisions accordingly. He shared how they always use 1/3 of their time to plan.

You may think his example is extreme as he’s encountering life or death situations. However it’s not dissimilar to business. Do you want to survive in business, or better thrive?

It doesn’t matter what industry or profession you are in having complete clarity on what you are trying to achieve is empowering and it’s also motivational. At the moment I have a goal I am trying to achieve. It’s not something I have done before. I do have clarity on the end result, however I didn’t have clarity on how I was going to get there broken down to what I had to do daily. As a result of that I was wasting a lot of time. Once I got the clarity I needed, I was pretty much off and running. Momentum created right there with clarity.

So whilst it may seem that taking time out to plan is impossible in your busy schedule, the benefits you will get from doing it will far outweigh the sacrifice you will make. Ensure you have clarity on the big picture and the ‘how’ you will achieve it. It’s the fuel you need to get going and maintain the momentum.