How to See Things Clearly, Fast 

How, as a leader in your organization, do you maximize your personal speed to clarity?

From the privileged position of spending decades watching great leaders 'get' things with deep clarity, often mind-bendingly quickly, I see again and again that three things, each somewhat mundane on their own make the biggest difference*:

2. Get right with your physical environment

I’ve known many leaders who can speak (and think) with crystal clarity when we’re talking over lunch or in a nearby Starbucks, but who slide into a miasma of vagueness or procrastination when we get back to their office or factory.

When that happens it’s nearly always because their physical environment isn’t optimized for clear thought. 

They hate their office, or it has no windows, or their key people are miles away, or they don’t have the right technology to hand, or they’re looking for eight hours a day right into an unadulterated mess of a warehouse.

Your mileage will vary of course, but if you find yourself inexplicably fuzzy-headed at work, but clearer about things elsewhere, then your physical surroundings are almost certainly a major part of the problem. If you have agency in the matter, take time to fix it - brighten things up, move the tools to where you need them to be - move distracting stuff that's shouting at you for attention all day long out of your line of sight. 

I have been using the principles of Feng Shui for some decades now - not (for me) in any spiritual or mystical way - but in structuring my own working environment in the sense of layout, light, and flow. I use it as practical design guidance, which I’ve found highly effective and which I recommend to anyone looking to create a more focused workspace.

3. Practice ‘inbox zero’ with your emotions

I earn my keep by helping CEO's and leadership teams be even better at what they are already great at, and one of the greatest challenges both they (and I) face is in addressing issues that are hard to see with clarity, not because of the issue itself, but because of the emotions surrounding it.

Underlying emotions are something we all deal with all the time, and they're difficult enough. But overlying emotions - those which hide or mask clarity about the underlying issue - those are the most difficult of all.

Telling someone they’re not thinking clearly (or not thinking clearly fast enough) because of unresolved legacy emotions isn’t easy. 

But the truth is, if you’re harboring annoyance at a team member, if you have a fear of pulling the trigger on a decision because of past failure, if you're harboring bitterness after shabby treatment by someone else, or have any other form of significant emotional undertow, then you’ll have a poor speed to clarity.

The two practical tools that I have found most helpful in this respect, both in my own life and in coaching others, are:

1. Keeping short accounts on emotional issues. 
When I was in my early twenties I taught myself to enjoy drinking black coffee. I did it because I couldn't be bothered with the hassle of running out of (or ending up in a place without) cream and sugar. It was a silly little thing and it took me about three months to crack it. But in a very simple and trivial way it just made life easier. 

Much, much harder to do by far, but enormously more powerful, is building the discipline of learning to let go of unhelpful emotions in a short time frame. And yes, I'm well aware that that's an incredibly easy sentence to type, and that there's an entire industry devoted to helping people do exactly that. Nonetheless, I have proved to myself, and many leaders have done similarly, that if you can learn to do it, your speed to clarity will multiply immensely. 

2. Building a morning and evening airlock.
I wrote this in my fourth book, Do Scale: A Roadmap to Building a Remarkable Company:

Oftentimes, external mood-changers are what ‘flips’ a Visionary leader into the arsonist mindset. Maybe you had a row with a friend or family member, or your team got soundly beaten in last night’s game, or you couldn’t find your lucky socks this morning - whatever the cause, the shift from creative Visionary to destructive arsonist is most often driven by emotional negativity.
I tell all the Visionary leaders I work with who have started the long and often arduous journey to scale to build an emotional airlock.
By that I mean a physical trigger - a place perhaps, like the elevator you ride up in every morning; or a routine, like tuning in to your favorite podcast when you get in to the car - something that will trigger you to reset your emotional equilibrium. 
If you can’t fully shake off that sense of negativity, or fearfulness, or annoyance, then at least move in to a ‘charge neutral’ state, where you will consciously avoid acting out of reaction to whatever is bothering you.

And although in context I was writing about Visionary leaders specifically, it's advice I recommend to all leaders. You owe it to yourself and to those you work with to bring a 'charge neutral' state to the important work you do. 

* Hat-tip to my friend and occasional muse, Robert Peake for sending my mind in this direction. Robert speaks more truth in jest (and in rhythm) than I can think in dogged prose.

What about you? How do you maximize your personal speed to clarity?

Let Me Know In The Comments Below!