3 Clarity Hacks

I believe that clarity is an often overlooked superpower for CEOs. It can be used to make a huge difference in the trajectory of your business. I just finished the book as a matter of fact titled Radical Clarity, and there’s a link in the post if you’d like to order it. And I wanna share three practical uses of clarity in a growing tech business.

Mission/Vision
First mission and vision statements get a bad rap, and understandably so, because often they’re created by committee and they’re full of corporate speak, and they really don’t add value. More than that, they detract from the, the mission of the company because when you read them, they clearly say that they don’t say anything. You can use clarity to make, your vision for your business something tangible, something inspiring for your team, and something that will actually help you grow your business as well.

And to do that, what you really need to do is step back. Don’t have a committee. First of all, start with yourself and maybe a couple of your key leaders and figure out why are you here? What is the reason you created this business? And make it real. Don’t use big words. What is it that gets you outta bed every morning? What is it that gets people on the team together to do the work? The hard work? And part of that really important part of that is who exactly are you doing it for? I’m not talking about a target market. I’m talking about your bullseye customer. The people that, when they hear about what you do, they interrupt you and say, “Oh my gosh, where have you been? I’ve been looking for this forever.” Right? Those people identify them. That’s part of this story.

And then, most important of all, what is it that’s better for those people having run into your business? What does that look like? Define that value for that particular audience. That’s it. Yes, you wanna make it package it in a way that it’s usable by your team, but you don’t wanna pile it on with any other purpose or need. You wanted to focus on the why. So that’s one way to use clarity in your business.

Message
Another way is in how you talk to your prospects and your customers. So many accidental CEOs who are technical experts before they became business leaders are over rotated on the how. They websites are full of acronyms and technical terms.

They talk so much about what they can do and the capability, and they’re very excited about it because it’s really cool and it is. But that’s a mistake. That loading your conversation with your prospects, with all these details before they have seen the reason for why they should take time to get to know you, means that they’ll never take that time. And they’ll glaze, t’ll go right over their heads and they’ll move on. A clear message, meaning one that starts with how I how we can help you with this problem is the hook. That simple and intuitive that opens the door for them to spend the time and the energy with you to hear about those capabilities and the how you do that.

Metrics
And a third way to use clarity in your business operationally is call your metrics. So many dashboards, business dashboards are full of metrics that are not actionable. By that, I mean, and you can ask yourself this, which of our metrics when they are reported on in the meeting or in the email, cause action, that that number that is reported changes the behavior of somebody on the team. I have found that most metrics don’t pass that test. I call ’em cosmetics. They look good. They show activity, they show data, but they don’t promote change. They don’t do anything in the business. So, you know, look at your dashboard, look at how you measure things. I recommend that you have one metric that makes or breaks any investment or project or initiative. There may be others that provide color and help the organization learn, but there’s one metric that tells you, are we moving forward? Are we being successful or are we not?

B2B Clarity
So there’s a few ideas for how clarity can help you. I think you’ll find many more. I encourage you to take a look at your business with an eye towards simplifying, removing the clutter, and allowing you and your team to focus on what’s most important so that your clients can get the most important value.