I spent months with a small team of three building a new startup. Everyone was sharp, motivated, and working hard—yet we were stuck. No matter how much we pushed, product-market fit didn’t get any closer.
The problem wasn’t effort—it was clarity. Nobody could answer, in one crisp sentence, “What are we doing right now, and why does it matter?”.
And I view this as a failure of my leadership.
Clarity is the highest leverage thing you can create as a leader. If the team doesn’t know what matters today, they’ll waste cycles chasing what might matter six months from now. That’s how you get chaos: smart people allocating resources to the wrong problems.
My test is simple: ask any teammate, “What are you working on right now, why, and how does it move the mission forward?” If their answer is vague, you’ve got a clarity gap. And clarity gaps spread like viruses—fast.
A team with clarity will outperform a team with more talent, more money, and more time. Every. Single. Time.
Clarity unlocks performance. Everything else—strategy decks, big visions, productivity hacks—comes after.
As a leader, your #1 job is to cut noise, point at the thing that matters right now, and make sure everyone understands why. Minimize distraction at all costs. Without clarity, there is no speed on the things that matter.