Quotes About Clarity

Healthy organizations believe that performance management is almost exclusively about eliminating confusion. They realize that most of their employees want to succeed, and that the best way to allow them to do that is to give them clear direction, regular information about how they're doing, and access to the coaching they need.

Commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in

leaders confuse the mere transfer of information to an audience with the audience's ability to understand, internalize, and embrace the message that is being communicated.

If this is so powerful, then why don't all executives create clarity in their organizations? Because many of them overemphasize the value of flexibility. Wanting their organizations to be "nimble," they hesitate to articulate their direction clearly, or do so in a less than thorough manner, thus giving themselves the deceptively dangerous luxury of changing plans in midstream.

truly nimble organizations dare to create clarity at all times, even when they are not completely certain about whether it is correct. And if they later see a need to change course, they do so without hesitation or apology, and thus create clarity around the new idea or answer.

Teams have to eliminate ambiguity and interpretation when it comes to success.

Teams that commit to decisions and standards do so because they know how to embrace two separate but related concepts: buy-in and clarity. Buy-in is the achievement of honest emotional support. Clarity is the removal of assumptions and ambiguity from a situation.

Meetings are ineffective because they lack contextual structure. Too many organizations have only one kind of regular meeting, often called a staff meeting. Either once a week or twice a month, people get together for two or three hours of randomly focused discussion about everything from strategy to tactics, from administrivia to culture. Because there is no clarity around what topics are appropriate, there is no clear context for the various discussions that take place.

KEY POINTS—FOCUSING ON RESULTS • The true measure of a great team is that it accomplishes the results it sets out to achieve. • To avoid distractions, team members must prioritize the results of the team over their individual or departmental needs. • To stay focused, teams must publicly clarify their desired results and keep them visible.

Teams that commit to decisions and standards do so because they know how to embrace two separate but related concepts: buy-in and clarity. Buy-in is the achievement of honest emotional support. Clarity is the removal of assumptions and ambiguity from a situation. Commitment is about a group of intelligent, driven individuals buying in to a decision precisely when they don't naturally agree. In other words, it's the ability to defy a lack of consensus.

commitment cannot occur if people are unclear about exactly what is being committed to.

when we fail to get clarity and alignment during meetings, we set in motion a colossal wave of human activity as executives and their direct reports scramble to figure out what everyone else is doing and why.

If everything is important, nothing is

As difficult as it is to build a cohesive team, it is not complicated. In fact, keeping it simple is critical

During the Weekly Tactical, there are two overriding goals: resolution of issues and reinforcement of clarity. Obstacles need to be identified and removed, and everyone needs to be on the same page.

It is at once shocking and understandable that intelligent people cannot see the correlation between failing to take the time to get clarity, closure, and buy-in during a meeting, and the time required to clean up after themselves as a result.

But organizational clarity is not merely about choosing the right words to describe a company's mission, strategy, or values; it is about agreeing on the fundamental concepts that drive it.

organizational clarity allows a company to delegate more effectively and empower its employees with a true sense of confidence.

An organization that has achieved clarity has a sense of unity around everything it does. It aligns its resources, especially the human ones, around common concepts, values, definitions, goals, and strategies, thereby realizing the synergies that all great companies must achieve.

When employees at all levels share a common understanding of where the company is headed, what success looks like, whom their competitors are, and what needs to be achieved to claim victory, there is a remarkably low level of wasted time and energy and a powerful sense of traction.

Once we achieve clarity and buy-in, it is then that we have to hold each other accountable for what we sign up to do, for high standards of performance and behavior.

Within companies that effectively over-communicate, employees at all levels and in all departments understand what the organization is about and how they contribute to its success. They don't spend time speculating on what executives are really thinking, and they don't look for hidden messages among the information they receive.

She is skilled at communicating the 'context' for her comments with the goal of ensuring understanding.

No amount of intellectual prowess or personal charisma can make up for an inability to identify a few simple things and stick to them over time.