Give Yourself the Gift of Clarity this Christmas

Clarity in business goes a long long way. It’s a virtue that I believe can often be forgotten. We remember the importance of punctuality and profitability but what about clarity and what can it do for your day-to-day?

Pretty much everything….I think.

Clarity is that ability to excuse the stress and stand amongst chaos with focused eyes. It’s that virtue that keeps you understanding of your true goals when times get messy.
Clarity is the answer to your hardest business questions. It means seeing past figures you might not like so much and understanding why they happened.
Clarity is even something that should be taught and remembered by your employees. Instead of a team that’s constantly thinking, “Why was I given this task and why did so-and-so get that promotion instead of me?”, they should be taught clarity. “Your purpose in this company is [insert purpose here] and your overall goal should be [insert purpose here]. Let’s learn to see beyond the day-to-day at times so that together we can focus and achieve [insert mega awesome ultimate employee or company purpose & goal here]” can go a long way in solving disputes and keeping a dedicated team.
Clarity can be the answer to that very difficult question, “how do I honestly and genuinely engage my audience?”. Simple, you don’t have to tell them everything, you just have to tell them what they want to know and what clarity has taught you – what truly matters.

Overall, clarity should be a business’ best friend. It can help you sift through the not-so-important and get straight-to-the-point. It can change the way you challenge obstacles, and even what you consider to be an obstacle.

So why is this little agency preaching clarity on our blog? Because we believe it’s made some of the greatest brands even greater.

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook for one…he wanted to build a platform that would enhance our communication. Without clarity he may have sold too early. Today, he now sits upon a company that has done just that, and continues to provide this service to millions of individuals everyday.

Steve Jobs and the Apple legacy he’s left behind. A friend told me a story about him once. He told me that one season there was a race to get products on the shelves before Christmas and each and every company wanted to their’s to sit on retails’ prime real estate shelves first (I’m talking about the big boys like IBM & Microsoft & Dell). It was common, of course, for cost-reduction to ship by sea so everyone was fretting about getting their product on the boats at just the right time. Of course, Jobs saw beyond the little “sea obstacle” and called up his favorite air-freight companies. He didn’t care that they were regarded by the industry as obnoxiously expensive. He purchased all the space he could and boarded his Apple products to be flown to everyone’s favorite tech-retail stores. What do you think happened next?

In a panic, the big boys frantically started dialing the air-freight companies only to find that Jobs had purchased all the freight space, whether he was using it or not. As a result of Jobs’ clarity – Apple products got to the shelves first while all the big boys’ products trailed weeks behind on boats in the middle of the ocean.

I’m sure for Jobs, his clarity provided him with a very merry Christmas.

Maybe you’ll adopt clarity this season & clarity will gift you too.