The Practice of Leadership » Clarity

Focus Your Communication on the Why and Less on the How

George Ambler — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 17:07:51 +0000

Kevin’s Eikenberry has a great post that caught my eye titled “What to Communicate” discussing the importance of communication to leaders. I really believe that we do not spend enough time figuring out the why before we move on to figure out the how. Kevin reminds us of this principle by providing the following rule of thumb:

Communicate why before how, and don’t switch too soon….. In most organizations and teams the ‘why’ is missing. When the why is strong enough, the how will be figured out. Besides, if you are trying to empower your organization, as a leader you probably need to spend less time on how anyway…. Focus more of your communication and conversation on why and less on how.

A similar view is expressed by Annette Clancy from the blog Interactions in the post “The Management/Leadership Conversation“, who makes the following observation:

“In order to follow I need to know ‘why’ and once we’ve worked out the ‘why’ I want to know what the implications are. Lots of people can manage, but leaders do things in their own inimitable way. Too many ‘leaders’ are really managers who are preoccupied with the ‘how’ and the ‘what’.”

The importance of spending time to understand the why before the how is discussed in detail in Peter Block’s book “The Answer to How is Yes”, some of the reasons Peter gives in his book, to support focusing on the why are:

“We often avoid the question of whether something is worth doing by going straight to the question ‘How do we do it?’”
“Too often when a discussion is dominated by by questions of How? we risk overvaluing what is practical and doable and postpone the questions of larger purpose…”
“…engage in conversations about why we do what we do….. create the space for longer discussions about purpose, about what is worth doing. It would refocus our attention on deciding what is the right question, rather than what is the right answer.”

Are you acting on what matters?
Are you acting on what’s worth doing?
Are you giving priority to what matters?
how will the world be different tomorrow as a result of what we do today?

Moving from BHAG to CCAG….

George Ambler — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 20:18:39 +0000

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I am a firm believer that clarity is a necessary ingredient for great leadership. I was first convinced of the importance of clarity to leaders by Marcus Buckingham in his article “The Clear Leader“. Recently Tom Peters in his post “From BHAG to CCAG” discusses the importance of clarity….

“The book Built to Last made popular the concept of the “BHAG”—the “Big Hairy Audacious Goal.”… You know what the problem is with BHAGs? They’re big and hairy…. I’m all for lofty goals and stretching, but I continually see a problem, in practice, with Built to Last‘s BHAG. Instead of being excited and motivated by the BHAG, team members are often confused and disillusioned. BHAGs are often half-baked and poorly communicated.
What I often hear about BHAGs from employees in client companies are things like, “We can’t keep up with the workload now. What will happen if we achieve this growth?” or, “I’m not sure what this means to me. What am I supposed to do to help us reach this goal?” or, “I’m not really sure what the goal is. It sounds visionary, but I don’t get it.”
I looked back at the article where Jim Collins and Jerry Porras first mentioned the BHAG ["Building Your Company’s Vision," Harvard Business Review, September-October 1996]. They defined that the BHAG must be ‘clear and compelling.’ Too bad these all-important words have been lost in translation.
I suggest we replace the idea of the Big Hairy Audacious Goal with the CCAG—the Clear and Compelling Audacious Goal.
The CCAG is just as lofty and just as much of a stretch as the BHAG. But it is more likely to be achieved, because more people will understand it and be motivated by it.
How clear and compelling are your organization’s goals to your team members? Are these goals ‘big and hairy’ or ‘clear and compelling’?”

I support Tom’s call to move from BHAGs to CCAGs… Clarity is of crucial importance considering the high volumes of information, media and marketing we’re bombarded with every day.

Clarity the Key to Employee Engagement

George Ambler — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 20:18:25 +0000

Management-Issues published an article, “Clarity the key to employee engagement” reporting on research by HR consultancy Watson Wyatt that found that…

“… a poll of 14,000 employees across Europe has suggested that those companies that provide their employees with a clear ‘line of sight’ when it comes to vision and direction tend to have a much more committed, engaged and productive workforce….. Organisations with superior financial performance measured by total shareholder return, market premium and employee productivity will, more often than not, have a more engaged workforce…. The most important driver for ensuring employee engagement was strategic direction, with other key drivers of engagement being employer communication, the attention given to customer focus within the organisation and performance management….. “Business leaders who articulate the business strategy give employees a clear ‘line of sight’ to how they can best contribute to the performance of their company,” said Andrew Cocks, a senior consultant at Watson Wyatt.”

This research provide further confirmation of the importance of clarity to successful leadership. How clear and compelling are your goals to your team?

Marcus Buckingham Outlines the Core Concepts of Superior Leadership

George Ambler — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 14:05:37 +0000

An article “The Clear Leader” from Fast Company discusses research conducted by Marcus Buckingham, author of First, Break All the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths, on the heart of leadership. Based upon his research Marcus Buckingham, maps out the core concepts that mark superior leadership as follows:

Leaders are Compelled by the Future – “There’s something unique and different that makes a leader, and it’s not about creativity or courage or integrity. As important as they are, you can have those attributes and still fail to be a great leader. A leader’s job is to rally people toward a better future. Leaders can’t help but change the present, because the present isn’t good enough. They succeed only when they find a way to make people excited by and confident in what comes next…….. With leaders, the future calls to them in a voice they can’t drown out. The future is more real than the present; it compels them to act.”
Turn Anxiety into Confidence – “For a leader, the challenge is that in every society ever studied, people fear the future. The future is unstable, unknown, and therefore potentially dangerous. So in order to succeed, leaders must engage our fear of the unknown and turn it into spiritedness. By far the most effective way to turn fear into confidence is to be clear — to define the future in such vivid terms that we can see where we are headed. Clarity is the antidote to anxiety, and therefore clarity is the preoccupation of the effective leader. If you do nothing else as a leader, be clear.”
Be Clear about Whom You Serve – “Leaders can be wrong. They can’t be confusing. If we are going to follow you into the future, we need to know precisely whom we are trying to please. It’s a scary thing to please all of the people all of the time. So to calm our fear, we need you to narrow our focus. Tell us who will be judging our success. When you do this with clarity, you give us confidence — confidence in our judgment, in our decisions, and ultimately in our ability to know where to look to determine if we have fulfilled our mission.”
Be Clear About Why You’re Going to Win – “….As a leader, your job is to make people more confident about the future you’re dragging them into. To that end, you need to tell them why they’re going to win. There are many competitors out there. Why will we beat them? There are many obstacles in our path. Why will we overcome them? The more clearly you can answer these questions, the more confident we will be, and therefore the more resilient, the more persistent, and the more creative…. Even if it doesn’t incorporate all the reality of the world, find the edge — one edge — and talk about it all the time….”
Keep Your Core Score – “…clarity is lost if you end up looking at 15 different metrics. It’s a terrible leadership failure to tell your employees that all of these measurements are important. When followers are presented with numerous scores, they get confused. The job of a leader is to say, ‘Of all the things we measure, this is the most important.’”
If You Want to be Clear, Act – “Of course, a leader must take action — action leads to impact. But actions also possess a separate, equally powerful quality. Actions are unambiguous. If you, the leader, can highlight a few carefully selected actions, then your followers will no longer have to infer the future from theoretical pronouncements about “core values” or your “mission statement.” We will simply look to see what actions you take and found our faith and confidence on these. But be aware that we respond best to two types of action: symbolic action and systemic action… Symbolic action is just that — a representation of what the future can look like. Symbolic action grabs our attention; it gives us something new and vivid on which to focus.”

I have previously posted on the importance of clarity for successful leadership.

Have you acted yet?
Are you clear on why you’re doing what you’re doing?
Is your team clear?

Effective Leadership Requires Clarity

Companies Need Less Communication…. Not More!

George Ambler — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:52:14 +0000

I couldn’t agree more with David Woods who makes the point that Companies Need Less Communications… Not More!….

Companies don’t need more communication. They need more clarity.
Clarity of the vision of the company.
Clarity of where the company is going (long term and short term).
Clarity of HOW the company will get there.
Clarity of individual roles and how those roles create value toward the vision.
Clarity of how roles must intertwine in order to achieve extraordinary results.
Clarity of how the company will hold itself and each individual accountable.

When people ask leader to communicate they usually are looking for more clarity! Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) are not eliminated simply by communicating…. clarity of a leader’s values, purpose and vision is required to build the necessary levels of trust.

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