Clarity First How Smart Leaders And Organizations Achieve Outstanding Performance

Award-winning business performance improvement and Lean management expert Karen Martin diagnoses a ubiquitous business management and leadership problem—the lack of clarity—and outlines specific actions to dramatically improve organizational performance. Through her global consulting projects, keynote speeches, and work with thousands of leaders, Karen has seen first-hand how a pervasive lack of clarity strangles business performance and erodes employee engagement. Ambiguity is the corporate default state, a condition so prevalent that “tolerance for ambiguity” has become a clichéd job requirement. It doesn’t have to be this way. In Clarity First, Karen provides methods and insights for achieving clarity to unleash potential, innovate at higher levels, and solve the problems that matter to deliver outstanding business results. Both a visionary road map and practical guide, this book will help leaders: •Identify and communicate the organization’s true purpose •Set achievable priorities •Deliver greater customer value through more efficient processes •Provide greater transparency about true versus assumed performance •Build strong problem-solving and critical thinking capabilities throughout the organization •Develop personal clarity to be a more direct, purposeful, and successful leader Eliminating ambiguity is the first step for leaders and organizations to achieve strategic goals. Learn how to gain the clarity needed to make better decisions, lead more effectively, and boost organizational performance. When it comes to leading an outstanding organization, every great leader needs Clarity First.

Award-winning business performance improvement and Lean management expert Karen Martin diagnoses a ubiquitous business management and leadership problem—the lack of clarity—and outlines specific actions to dramatically improve organizational performance. Through her global consulting projects, keynote speeches, and work with thousands of leaders, Karen has seen first-hand how a pervasive lack of clarity strangles business performance and erodes employee engagement. Ambiguity is the corporate default state, a condition so prevalent that “tolerance for ambiguity” has become a clichéd job requirement. It doesn’t have to be this way. In Clarity First, Karen provides methods and insights for achieving clarity to unleash potential, innovate at higher levels, and solve the problems that matter to deliver outstanding business results. Both a visionary road map and practical guide, this book will help leaders: •Identify and communicate the organization’s true purpose •Set achievable priorities •Deliver greater customer value through more efficient processes •Provide greater transparency about true versus assumed performance •Build strong problem-solving and critical thinking capabilities throughout the organization •Develop personal clarity to be a more direct, purposeful, and successful leader Eliminating ambiguity is the first step for leaders and organizations to achieve strategic goals. Learn how to gain the clarity needed to make better decisions, lead more effectively, and boost organizational performance. When it comes to leading an outstanding organization, every great leader needs Clarity First.

A proven approach for helping leaders and teams work together to achieve better decisions, greater commitment, and stronger results More than ever, effective leadership requires us to work as a team, but many leaders struggle to get the results they need. When stakes are high, you can't get great results by just changing what you do. You also need to change how you think. Organizational psychologist and leadership consultant Roger Schwarz applies his 30+ years of experience working with leadership teams to reveal how leaders can drastically improve results by changing their individual and team mindset. Provides practical guidance to help teams increase decision quality, decrease implementation time, foster innovation, get commitment, reduce costs and increase trust Outlines 5 core values leadership teams can adopt to exponentially improve results Author of The Skilled Facilitator and The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook Get the results you and your team need. Start by applying the practical wisdom of Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams.

The key to success in life and business is to become a master at Conversational Intelligence. It's not about how smart you are, but how open you are to learn new and effective powerful conversational rituals that prime the brain for trust, partnership, and mutual success. Conversational Intelligence translates the wealth of new insights coming out of neuroscience from across the globe, and brings the science down to earth so people can understand and apply it in their everyday lives. Author Judith Glaser presents a framework for knowing what kind of conversations trigger the lower, more primitive brain; and what activates higher-level intelligences such as trust, integrity, empathy, and good judgment. Conversational Intelligence makes complex scientific material simple to understand and apply through a wealth of easy to use tools, examples, conversational rituals, and practices for all levels of an organization.

More powerful than strategy, culture, or innovation, discover the one business tool that is the ultimate game-changer! Leading Clarity offers a bold proposal that changes the trajectory of your business and leadership. Today’s business environment is more complex than at any time in history with greater ambiguity, chaos and uncertainty. Too often, individuals and organizations become bogged down with competing priorities and the constant press of daily demands. This tangled mass of noise effectively handicaps every facet of business. This book provides a proven, time-tested strategy that has brought dynamic results to hundreds of organizations of all scope and size. Informed by in-depth research conducted by the Deutser team, made up of business strategists, social scientists, organizational psychologists, innovation specialists and designers, the framework and methodologies presented will align focus and drive organizational performance. Leading Clarity takes you beyond understanding the strengths and weaknesses of individuals and teams, and guides you through a dynamic process that unveils what is most critical and most enduring about your business. Clarity is the key measure of unprecedented success and a vital factor in productivity, engagement, and performance. Now, Deutser is sharing the secrets of his proven blueprint for creating clarity. With these powerful principles and stories of how to put them to work, you too can leverage the exponential impact of clarity. Learn how clarity can help you: Lead teams and individuals with clear direction and purpose Value inside the box thinking and innovation Identify the impact drivers that keeps your employees happier, more engaged and performing at their peak Infuse positivity into your organization’s DNA as a profitability catalyst Clarity is the dynamic force that aligns and connects the most critical business principles. Leading Clarity moves you beyond any preconceived limitations and sets new direction, expectation and pathways for success.

New breakthrough thinking in organizational learning, leadership, and change Continuous improvement, understanding complex systems, and promoting innovation are all part of the landscape of learning challenges today's companies face. Amy Edmondson shows that organizations thrive, or fail to thrive, based on how well the small groups within those organizations work. In most organizations, the work that produces value for customers is carried out by teams, and increasingly, by flexible team-like entities. The pace of change and the fluidity of most work structures means that it's not really about creating effective teams anymore, but instead about leading effective teaming. Teaming shows that organizations learn when the flexible, fluid collaborations they encompass are able to learn. The problem is teams, and other dynamic groups, don't learn naturally. Edmondson outlines the factors that prevent them from doing so, such as interpersonal fear, irrational beliefs about failure, groupthink, problematic power dynamics, and information hoarding. With Teaming, leaders can shape these factors by encouraging reflection, creating psychological safety, and overcoming defensive interpersonal dynamics that inhibit the sharing of ideas. Further, they can use practical management strategies to help organizations realize the benefits inherent in both success and failure. Presents a clear explanation of practical management concepts for increasing learning capability for business results Introduces a framework that clarifies how learning processes must be altered for different kinds of work Explains how Collaborative Learning works, and gives tips for how to do it well Includes case-study research on Intermountain healthcare, Prudential, GM, Toyota, IDEO, the IRS, and both Cincinnati and Minneapolis Children's Hospitals, among others Based on years of research, this book shows how leaders can make organizational learning happen by building teams that learn.

The inspirational bestseller that ignited a movement and asked us to find our WHY Discover the book that is captivating millions on TikTok and that served as the basis for one of the most popular TED Talks of all time—with more than 56 million views and counting. Over a decade ago, Simon Sinek started a movement that inspired millions to demand purpose at work, to ask what was the WHY of their organization. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, and these ideas remain as relevant and timely as ever. START WITH WHY asks (and answers) the questions: why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over? People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it. START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who have had the greatest influence in the world all think, act and communicate the same way—and it's the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.

A hands-on risk management playbook for nonprofit leaders, funders, and advisors In Managing Your Nonprofit for Resilience: Use Lean Risk Management to Improve Performance and Increase Engagement, experienced nonprofit risk management expert Ted Bilich delivers a comprehensive and engaging exploration of how to keep your nonprofit vibrant, proactive, and out of trouble. In the book, you'll learn how the world’s best charitable organizations employ lean risk management to prioritize, mitigate, and eliminate the most significant risks facing nonprofits today. The author teaches you how to develop a risk management cycle and work with risks at the board level, implementing lean risk management tactics incrementally. You'll also discover: Discussions of fundamental risk management elements Sample compliance checklists, example questions to ask during risk inventories, and common challenges faced by nonprofits in a wide variety of sectors Strategies for confronting nascent risk and issues with radical candor and taking reasonable steps to address them before they spiral out of control An engaging and essential resource for the managers and directors of nonprofits of all sizes, Managing Your Nonprofit for Resilience belongs on the bookshelves of anyone tasked with shepherding a charitable organization through an increasingly challenging and volatile environment.

Tired of misalignment, friction, and stalled workflow? Flow Engineering is a practical guide to using value stream mapping techniques to align teams, unlock innovation, and optimize performance. Based on foundations from Value Stream Mapping, cybernetics, and the Toyota Production System, Flow Engineering's lightweight and iterative practices build the value, clarity, and flow required for effective collaboration and collective action. Written by Value Stream Mapping experts Steve Pereira and Andrew Davis, Flow Engineering provides a step-by-step guide for running fast-paced mapping workshops that rapidly build shared understanding. Using five key maps to facilitate collaborative “flow conversations,” Pereira and Davis show how teams can surface tangled process dependencies, conflicting priorities, and unspoken assumptions that grind progress to a halt. The result? A clear roadmap owned by the people doing the work to accelerate innovation cycles, optimize workflows, and achieve more effective coordination. Applicable across any industry, Flow Engineering's techniques have helped leading organizations improve critical workflows like customer onboarding, product development, and hiring. It's time to stop trying one-size-fits-all frameworks to find value, clarity, and flow to improve culture and performance. Flow Engineering meets your organization where it's at and shows you how to move it where it needs to go.

Turf wars, low morale, bad politics, and misguided strategies: these are issues that claim much of a leader’s time. But this parade of dysfunctions and messy “people” problems actually points to an organization confused about its core business, torn between competing ideas about what it is and wants to be—an organization facing an identity crisis. Strategy and leadership expert Chatham Sullivan argues that when the purpose of a business becomes confused, it is the leaders’ responsibility to restore clarity, especially in the face of tough strategic choices that have political, personal, and cultural consequences for the organization. Sullivan shows leaders how to take the decisive stand that clarifies their organization’s core purpose. Featuring compelling stories of leaders who have succumbed to and successfully resolved their organizations’ identity crises, The Clarity Principle bridges the gap between leadership and strategy and demonstrates the tremendous gains to be achieved by leaders willing to make tough choices.