“When you confuse, you lose.  Noise is the enemy.” – Donald Miller

I listen to a lot of podcasts.  The one that has slowly risen to the top spot for me this last year is StoryBrand with Donald Miller.  The hosts are fun and the guests are brilliant, but what attracts me most is the overall driving focus on the need to bring clarity to our message and to our leadership.

Clarity.

A surprisingly elusive characteristic in many organizations but it’s like a deep breath of fresh air when you find it. Focus, motivation, alignment, innovation – these are just the beginning when you make clarity a guiding value in your leadership.

Any organization that primarily consists of humans (i.e. all of them) will naturally move towards complexity and confusion.  To be simple and clear is to be intentional.

In my own leadership, I have articulated this value with the phrase, “Lead Clear” (in fact, the alternate URL to this site is www.LeadClear.ca).

It’s one thing to say this is a value, but how will you know when you’re leading clear?  Or, better yet, what can you expect to see when you’re not? What signs will you begin to encounter on your team?

All kinds of things begin to break down when we lack organizational clarity.  Here are just 8 that I’ve noticed:

1. No one is repeating what you’re saying.

Language creates culture. If the words you’re using as a leader to describe the vision, values, and strategy of your organization aren’t being adopted by your team, this is a strong sign that there is a lack of clarity around what you’re trying to accomplish.

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to understand something once you know what to call it? If there is lots of different terminology being used to describe the same things, you will find it difficult to get your team on the same page.

As the leader, spend time creating and communicating a shared body of language around the core aspects of who you are as an organization. Many of the other signs on this list can be minimized if we get this one right.

2. Everyone has their own wins

Do people in your organization know when to stand up and cheer? Is there a common scorecard being used to gauge success or is everyone chalking up wins differently?

If people are confused about this, they’ll end up prioritizing whatever is important to them. People want to succeed and if they’re not given a picture of what that looks like for your team, they’ll just paint their own.

3. High capacity leaders are leaving

There will always be turnover on your teams, but pay attention to who is staying and who is leaving. Are you keeping the right ones? Your best leaders won’t put up with confusion or lack of direction.

High capacity leaders are looking for a place where they can meaningfully contribute to something meaningful. If they’re unclear on what their role is or what the vision of the team is, they’re not sticking around. They’ve got plenty of other places they could be.

4. Nobody knows what to say “no” to

Without clarity, anything that has any value whatsoever looks like it is worth spending your time on. This isn’t true. Working on good things doesn’t mean you’re working on the right things. Too often, we use the “shotgun approach” – just do as many things as possible and hope that something hits the target.

One of the ways we know we’re heading in this direction at our church is simply by looking at our calendar.  Instead of it being filled with clear, sustainable, and strategic steps, it is cluttered with one-off events that aren’t sure where they’re leading people.

Does your team feel like they have permission to say “no” to new opportunities? When was the last time someone on your team shut down a program or stopped planning an event in order to be more focused and more effective?  If this isn’t happening, you might have a clarity problem.

5. Questions aren’t being asked.

You will know that clarity is both a personal value and an organizational value by the quantity and quality of questions that are being asked. Sure, at some point, a lack of questions may mean that everyone is clear on what they’re doing, but that’s never how something starts.  Clarity is something you have to wrestle for. It will include debate, discussion, and lots of questioning.

Prepare yourself. This will be time-consuming. Sweet mercy is it ever time-consuming. You cannot short-circuit this process, though.  Unless you have a team that thrives with you being an authoritarian leader who makes unilateral decisions without them (i.e. you have no millennials on your team), you need to ensure there is clarity before moving forward.

When a good question slows down a process or a meeting, how do you respond? Do you welcome it or express frustration? As the leader, your job is to create a culture in which difficult questions are encouraged.

6. Change at the top doesn’t equal change on the front lines

Some leaders are great at engaging in discussion and decision-making at 30,000 feet in the air but have no idea how to communicate with those on the ground. What may seem clear to those in the upper circles of leadership can easily sound like abstract, irrelevant, nonsense to those on the front lines.

We often think we’re casting vision effectively as leaders but what if people aren’t actually catching it? If the vision for your church or organization is changing but the work being done by volunteers or front-line staff isn’t also changing, there is a breakdown somewhere.

It’s one thing for your team of direct reports to say you’re being clear, but what does the person who is multiple layers removed say?

7. You have an innovation problem

Without clarity in your organization, there are two probable scenarios here:

One, innovation isn’t happening. People are maintaining the status quo because they don’t know which direction they’re going. If you don’t know where to go, how are you going to try and get there more effectively?

Two, innovation is happening but it’s random and not strategic, meaning it’s probably not sustainable and is wasting resources. This is the “shotgun approach” mentioned above.

If you want a culture of meaningfully unique innovation, you need to be crystal clear on who you are, where you’re going, and why you’re going there. Clarity breeds innovation.

8. No one is working together

Without clarity around vision and shared goals, it’s hard to know how to join forces and collaborate.  Similar to innovation, your collaboration will either be minimal or it won’t be strategic.

Do your people know how the different functions or departments in your organization all work together to achieve the shared vision? In the world of church leadership, it is all too common for every area of ministry to function independently from each other, acting like autonomous silos, each with their own systems, values, structure, mission statements, etc.

When clarity is a value, everyone sees how everything else connects, overlaps, and leads in the same direction.

Next Steps

If you nodded your head to more than one or two of these signs, you might have a problem with organizational clarity.

If you nodded your head to all of them, you definitely have a problem with organizational clarity.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone.  Over the last 14 years, I’ve noticed all of these signs in some shape or form in the churches and teams I’ve given leadership to. Clarity is hard.

Your first step is simply to commit to making it a value in your leadership. Start seeing yourself as the Chief Clarity Officer for your team.

Your next step will be a ruthlessly honest evaluation of the level of confusion and complexity on your team or in your organization.  You may need an outside perspective to help you discover this, as this becomes a greater blind spot the longer you’ve been with the same organization.

One of your best assets for this is simply your new hires.  If you bring someone new onto your team, take advantage of the fresh set of eyes and get their perspective on as many different areas as possible.  In my weekly check-ins with new staff, I’ll regularly ask, “What did you notice that was confusing this week? What didn’t make sense? What do we need to make clearer?”

If you don’t have any new hires, you may want to consider hiring an outside consultant.  We recently starting working with Auxano to find clarity around our vision as a church. Perhaps you need to start working with a StoryBrand guide to clarify your message.  There are many other options out there; don’t be afraid to drop some money to get help. Clarity is worth it.

What’s the step you need to take this week?

What’s your take?

How have you seen a lack of organizational clarity show up in your setting?  What signs would you add to this list?  Leave a comment.  I’d love to learn from you!

Thanks for stepping up in your leadership this week.  The time you spend on your own growth is a gift to those you serve.

-Dan

www.LeadClear.ca

Lead Yourself.  Lead the Church.  Lead the Next Generation.

Lead Clear.