Why Creating Clarity is a Leader's Most Important Task in 2019

A leader’s most important task is to create clarity for themselves and their organization.

Without personal clarity, life satisfaction decreases and complacency sets in. Without organizational clarity, productivity suffers and turnover increases.

Lack of personal clarity begins with lack of clearly defined goals both short term and long term. We know that “I want to accomplish something sometime” isn’t a goal. But if you look at the goals you have written down for 2019, can any of your goals be detrimental to one another?

A big reason we lack clarity in our lives is prioritization. Successful individuals are adept at prioritizing, which means liberal use of the word “no.” Look over your goals once they are written down and rank them 1 to however many goals you wrote down. You can’t have ties.

Before you get too anxious about your rankings, understand that ranking a goal near the bottom doesn’t mean you won’t accomplish that goal it just means you might need more time than you originally planned.

Once you have personal clarity you can transition to providing organizational clarity. Lack of organizational clarity is a three headed monster that must be addressed one step at a time.

• Step 1: Clear Understanding of Employees’ Personal Goals
  Your employees work for you because they feel working for you helps them achieve their personal goals more effectively than working for someone else. By understanding your employees’ personal goals you can tie successful achievement of corporate goals to achievement of personal goals.
• Step 2: Eliminate Mutual Mystification Around Daily Activities
  Even if corporate goals are aligned with an employee’s personal goals, they will produce only to the level of their peers or their own personal motivation. It's very rare to find an individual who will stretch outside that comfort zone without a defined plan to do so. By creating an accountability program based on meaningful goals with specific, measurable activities you will increase productivity.
• Step 3: Remove Uncertainty About Your Organization’s Approach to Outside Influences
  Move into a new year often brings forecasts of economic uncertainty, you must set a consistent pace for your employees to follow. Choose not to participate in economic downturns. Instead, choose to continue doing daily activities despite the fear, uncertainty and doubt of external factors. It must be made clear that outside influences are not a valid excuse for failing to perform defined behaviors.

In 2019 up your personal life satisfaction and stretch yourself by clearly prioritizing explicit goals. Create clarity for your employees by implementing an accountability program that ties corporate success to their personal success. Then continue doing the planned activities that build your business.

- Jody Williamson

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