What’s Standing Between You And Greater Success? Cut through the fog, eliminate confusion, stop wasting time and effort, motivate your team, and bring focus to your goals; it’s all within your grasp with concise insights from The Clarity Papers, the book from strategic clarity expert Ann Latham. Order Your Copy Now. Clarity comes first. Without it, we walk around the block to get next door, sabotage perfectly good strategy, erode profit, and thwart innovation. Most leaders believe they have clarity themselves and in their organization, but how do you know for sure? The Clarity Papers, a series of standalone, thematically related papers, will help you determine if a lack of clarity is standing between you and greater success. It also provides specific techniques for creating strategic clarity from the top of your organization to the bottom. A lack of clarity is ubiquitous. Ann Latham, founder of Uncommon Clarity®, Inc., has been bringing the Power of Clarity to clients representing more than 40 industries for almost two decades. Her clients enjoy dramatically improved speed of implementation, employee engagement, innovation, and profit. You can’t afford not to read this book. (Don’t delay, get The Clarity Papers now.) Buy on AMAZON What Others Say About The Clarity Papers Get Clarity Now via Amazon! About The Author Ann Latham is the founder of Boston area consulting firm Uncommon Clarity®, Inc. Her clients represent more than 40 industries and range from for-profit organizations, such as Boeing, Medtronic, and Hitachi, to nonprofit organizations as diverse as Public Television and Smith College. Ann is considered an expert in strategic clarity and the productivity, performance, and commitment that follow. She is the author of The Clarity Papers – The Executive’s Guide to Clear Thinking and Better, Faster Results plus three other books. Ann has also been interviewed and has been written… read more →
What is the best way to create commitment? Invite everyone to frequent communications meeting. Make sure everyone feels heard. Launch initiatives with great enthusiasm. Collect ideas from lots of employees. Develop an employee engagement program. All of the above. None of the above. Make your choice and then see if you are correct!
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!
I’ve been an expert blogger for Forbes for 16 months now and I thought you might be interested in my 10 most popular posts at this point. The first one has been read by over 64,000 people – that’s a happy record for me! 8 Secrets Smart People Know About Time Management 9 Reasons You And Your Employees Can’t Do 40 Hours Of Work In 40 Hours – And What To Do About It Three Traits of Top Notch Leaders 10 Reasons Your Employee Engagement Program Is Hurting Your Company The Holy Grail of Productivity Are You Ready For The Next Big Innovation In Workplace Productivity? 5 Reasons Meetings Never Improve One Incredibly Costly Mistake You Make Over And Over Again 21 Games People Play With To Do Lists 12 Reasons Why How You Make Decisions Is More Important Than What You Decide
Clarity Empowers and Bolsters Productivity Clarity empowers. It also dramatically bolsters productivity. How clear is your organization? Seeing the Fog Every Clarity Journey begins with seeing the lack of clarity silently draining profits, energy, and talent. Why It Matters What’s the cost of confusion? The Holy Grail of Productivity Are You Ready for the Next Big Innovation in Workplace Productivity? Think You Know What’s Eating Your Profits? Think Again! Goals and Expectations Insufficiently specific priorities and expectations reduce productivity. In addition, having lots of priorities means you have no priorities. It also means frazzled employees suffering from priority paralysis and retreating to easy, favorite, or duck-in-a-row tasks that provide the greatest sense of accomplishment or appeasement. Stop Managing Your Time! How Well Do You Deal With Work Overload? 8 Secrets Smart People Know About Time Management Commitment and Ownership Commitment and ownership are gold-plated levers of productivity and success. To increase both, employees need the opportunity and the authority to make a real difference within a system that is informed, logical, and fair. Whom Should I Invite to My Decision 12 Reasons Why How You Make Decisions Is More Important Than What You Decide Forget Team-building! Try My Secret Sauce Instead Execution “Busyness” is eating the corporate lunch. Profits grow when employees spend their time creating value for which customers would gladly pay. 5 Secrets for Making Change Stick 3 Staggeringly Simple Steps to Accomplishing More Faster 9 Reasons You And Your Employees Can’t Do 40 Hours Of Work In 40 Hours & What To Do About It Why Your Planning And Tracking Are Generating Nothing More Than The Illusion Of Control Accountability Partners work together to overcome obstacles. Companies that treat their employees like true partners are more likely to have the right… read more →
In “Why Is Productivity So Weak? Three Theories” from The New York Times on April 28th, the author’s “depressing scenario” suggests that innovations in technology (such as a computer on every desk) and management techniques (such as outsourcing noncore functions) have been fully implemented across corporate America and will produce no additional productivity improvements. While I don’t think this is entirely true, I suspect we are seeing diminishing returns. But what that means is that we are ready for the next big innovation in workplace productivity! Corporate America is buried in time-wasting confusion. Clarity is the answer. Here are just a few examples:
I’ve been remiss in not sharing a compilation of my Forbes articles with you for several months. Sorry about that! Most Popular 8 Secrets Smart People Know About Time Management 9 Reasons You & Your Employees Can’t Do 40 Hrs Of Work In 40 Hrs Three Traits Of Top-Notch Leaders 10 Reasons Your Employee Engagement Program Is Hurting Your Company Most Recent Do What You Love — And Watch Your Productivity Suffer 10 Reasons Leaders Get Dragged Into Problems Unnecessarily And What To Do About It Especially for Non-profits The Secret To Sustainability For Non-profit Organizations I hope you find these valuable!
You can’t solve a problem without eliminating its cause. Unfortunately, most organizations either struggle to find the real cause or they skip that step and just try “solutions” at random. Those solutions range from seemingly small changes such as: • New forms • New rules • New meetings • New forms and rules for meetings To enormous initiatives such as: • New employee engagement programs • New performance management systems • New organizational charts, titles, and office assignments You get the idea. (Contribute your favorite “futile fixes” in the comment section of this article!) What do these ”solutions” have in common?
What’s the very first decision you make each day? For some it comes while still in bed. “Should I get up or hit the snooze button?” For those who lay their clothes out the night before, have no children, and are locked into an unwavering morning routine, including the content and quantity of breakfast, that first decision of the day can be postponed. Now that I’ve written that, I’m really curious to know how long someone could actually avoid that first decision. Not that it matters. Avoiding a few dozen decisions in the morning may reduce initial stress, but it’s only a drop in the bucket of what’s to come. We make thousands of decisions every day. Many are easy, but others are complex, stressful, or both. Because there are so many decisions and because they are literal forks in the road with dramatic impact on results, costs, time, feelings, and relationships, how you make decisions is extremely important. This is why decision-making is a top priority when I work with clients to create a culture of clarity. The best way to make decisions involves a four-step process that allows you to “SOAR through decisions,” whether alone or in a group. I won’t go into the details of that process now, because I want to focus on the value of having a process, not the process itself. If your decisions actually follow the four distinct steps of SOAR and involve the right people at each of those steps, with transparency, the benefits are numerous and dramatic:
In case you missed my viral posts on Forbes in the past month: 8 Secrets Smart People Know About Time Management 10 Reasons Your Employee Engagement Program Is Hurting Your Company 9 Reasons You And Your Employees Can’t Do 40 Hours Of Work In 40 Hours – And What To Do About It The first one has collected over 45,000 views. Don’t miss it!