Clarity First

Written by: Rebekah Roux, Office of Process Improvement Intern

Author: Karen Martin

ISBN 978-1-259-83735-7

January 3, 2023

INTRODUCTION-

Karen Martin believes in the importance of clarity in the workplace. She states that “clarity creates an environment in which people are able to perform at their best, and thereby enable higher levels of organizational performance” (Martin 8). Clarity is defined in this book as “the quality of being easily and accurately understood” ( Martin 11). Having clarity isn’t just about stating your goals, it's also about having a plan as well as continual communication between levels and branches in a company. A good business will define clarity as a value, and award employees that identify areas of improvement within the company structure. By clearly stating the expectations of the company, employees will have a standard to work towards and can set their personal goals to match those of the company. This is also the case when communicating information; Whether the information is project related or updates and changes to everyday work, it’s important for the supervisor to ensure the employees understand what’s expected of them and feel prepared for the new systems in place. When clear information is transmitted, it reduces the risk of mistakes because the employee will understand what their role is. 

By supporting the people who bring attention to areas of improvement, a company is showing they are serious about clarity and want to continue improving. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster is an extreme example used in the book. During this disaster, staff members were certain the earthquake and tsunami had damaged the plant to the point of a meltdown. This company had a policy of not using the word “meltdown,” causing the communications to seem less urgent than the reality. After two months of miscommunications, the plant experienced a full meltdown and any possibility of preventing a radioactive spill were lost (Martin 13).

This book separates the “hallmarks of clarity” into “The Five P’s”, including purpose, priorities, process, performance and problem solving. These hallmarks are represented not only in the workplace but also personally, and Martin touches on the importance of clarity in one’s personal life because it begins by an individual embracing it in all senses of themself. Clarity needs 100% of an organization's support to be successful and is not something accomplished by meeting people halfway. This book, “Clarity First” by Karen Martin, encourages creating clarity one step at a time.

Purpose-

AS seemingly straightforward as it is, the first question to ask when seeking clarity is “what is your organization’s purpose?” (Martin 33). This question can also be posed as a “why” question, why does the organization do what it does? For a hint, the answer is not profit. If employees don’t know the purpose of their work then they lack buy-in and productivity diminishes. When Martin asked this question to an insurance firm she was faced with silence and then gradual responses of “we help our customers reduce insurance expenses” (Martin 38). This response was true, but didn’t get into the “why” of what they do. She continued asking “why” until they came to the conclusion that the company saves lives! By reducing expenses related to medical needs, they are making medical necessities more accessible resulting in lives saved. This is significant and is a “why” statement that can influence decisions in the workplace. Furthermore, this can be used to unite the company under one intention. Having a clearly stated organizational purpose ensures everyone is working towards a common goal and not getting side tracked with projects or initiatives that don’t support this goal. It allows people to think as a “we” rather than an “I”.

Stating the purpose of an organization is difficult and can be uncomfortable. It forces leaders to think in terms of emotions rather than data which is an area traditionally kept separate from business. New studies have shown that if an employee is deeply connected to their organization emotionally then they will be more loyal and their organization will do better financially (Martin 49). It’s also hard to state and identify a company's true purpose because it can highlight past political decisions made in favor of a group of leaders rather than the company as a whole. This ties into the idea that in order to achieve clarity, you have to have 100% support from the organization on all levels.The company will be better in the long-run with a clear purpose. When this purpose is found, it needs to be communicated to everyone from executive leaders to individual work groups in the company.

Clear communication of a purpose starts with it being clearly stated separately from the mission, vision, values, and guiding principles of an organization. Although all of these should complement each other, they are all distinct. A purpose is defined as “a verb that reflects why you have a mission, vision, values, or guiding principles”(Martin 40). Keeping these separate allows companies to keep their purpose clear and always have an answer to the “why” questions. When a company has a purpose that aligns with their customers values, the customers will stay more loyal to the company because they believe in what it stands for. TOMS shoe company is an example with their “buy one donate one” motto where they donate a pair of shoes to a needy community for each pair purchased. This allows TOMS to wear their purpose openly and use it as a way to reach their customers on a more intimate level (Martin 51).

Customers play a huge role in identifying an organization’s purpose. To accurately align the organization’s views with their customer base, one must first clarify who they are serving and why by accepting honest customer reviews during the time of their purchase and experience. Once you have a solid understanding of your customer base, create a “customer persona” and cater your company's experience and purpose to this persona (Martin 57). This persona will change overtime, so continual customer data is necessary to make this system successful. When implementing this strategy, asking open-ended questions supports systematic success. Asking the 5 W's of a business model assists in the strategic identification of the organization's consumer demographics (Martin 59-60). Careful attention to the emotional responses from these questions help the decision makers find their “We Save Lives” slogan. When the purpose is clearly stated and communicated both within and outside of the company, one can use the purpose to make decisions and will find a more unified company.

Priorities-

If a company has too many projects happening at once, then workers lose focus resulting in wasted resources and reducing overall the amount of successful projects because none are being prioritized (Martin 66). Employees find themselves having to “react to the most immediate item, not the most important one.” (Martin 74). Having clear priorities helps companies direct resources on the most urgent issues without overwhelming their employees. Being able to identify problems that need to be solved immediately versus problems that can be put on the back burner is an important skill for supervisors and executives to have. Setting priorities for the company should come from a team of senior leadership and be communicated down to individual employees so every project works towards the main objective. These projects should also have a clearly identified start and end so everyone knows the problem orientation, therefore leaving no room for ambiguity regarding the end goal.

When prioritizing and assigning projects, it’s also important to keep in mind that workers have two “buckets” of work, including a “regular work bucket” of mandated duties and continuous improvement as well as a “special effort bucket” devoted to organizational problem solving (Martin 69). Given that it can be hard to differentiate a special effort from an everyday improvement, Martin provides three guidelines for why a project would be considered a special effort:

• Takes place in addition to consistent day-to-day tasks.

• Takes more than two weeks to complete.

• Teams of more than four members (Martin 69).

Keep in mind that these are just guidelines, and deciding what is a special effort should be done for each project. Ideally, the projects that a company wants to move forward with need to be defined and agreed upon before starting the next budget planning cycle. Martin states “how do you develop a proper budget if you don’t know the work that needs to be done?”(Martin 75). Her advice is to set your priorities and then budget around them.

Lowering the number of projects employees are involved in is also important because it lowers their need for excessive task-switching which has been proven to increase mistakes and lower productivity. Martin provides data supporting workers shift tasks 5-8 times daily, each shift resulting in a 15 minute decline in productivity. 

The first step to prioritizing projects is finding out what projects are currently in place and making an inventory of all the special efforts. This typically takes “three to six weeks” (Martin 77) and should be done by having the leaders survey what they are seeing and document any special efforts they find. Then the leaders should sort the efforts into active, stalled, in queue, rogue, and new ideas (Martin 77-78). The leaders can now sort through their inventory and decide which efforts to move forward with. 

Process-

While processes can drastically improve an organization, they typically don’t get the attention they need because they are not seen as “institutionally important enough to learn.”(Martin 100). Martin attributes this to invisibility of the process, inexperience of leadership, and the specialist mentality leaders can have about process mapping (Martin 101). Obscure processes with minimal problems lead to complacency and a lack of change efforts. (Martin 101). Process management isn’t a traditional part of business schools and most companies don't emphasize this practice either, creating a skills gap in the older-aged workforce. (Martin 101). When older professionals are eventually faced with process management, it often leads them to believe that it’s too hard for them to spearhead and that they have to hire a team with more experience which creates another barrier for them (Martin 101).

Creating a value stream is the first step to improving a process. A value stream lists the steps of a process involved in getting the goods or service to the customer. This allows the leader to view the current process with the Percent Complete and Accurate (%C&A) data analysis so leaders can view the process with the utmost clarity and see the degree of rework necessary in the value system. Leaders can use this information to prioritize improvements that will make the biggest difference. 

To use clarity to improve a process, first focus on its design. A good process is safe, efficient, effective, and easy to understand and perform. It’s easy to blame people when a process isn’t working but most of the time one will find the cause of a problem to be a detail in the process itself. Developing a skills matrix ensures that appropriate skill sets are utilized efficiently to find process breakdowns. It’s also important to clarify who has the power to make decisions in a process. Another way to improve a process is through process management. Having concrete steps and check-ins for a project helps keep the project alive in everyone's minds. A well managed process is documented, current, followed, consistently monitored, and regularly improved (Martin 122).  

Start by looking at one area of the organization, list out a value stream and look at the %C&A of each step in the value stream. This can help identify areas that could be improved. One should identify the employees in this area and their strengths and areas of improvement and see if everyone is in the right place. After getting a clear understanding of the employees skill levels and job descriptions make changes to the existing process

Performance-

When thinking of performance, it’s typical to think of the financial results of an organization. However, there is also “operations, the customer experience, or the employee experience'' (Martin 126). It's important to have a “from-to” statement so the growth of the company can be measured against the initial goals. Clarity regarding the goals of the company and how fast the company is meeting their goals is imperative to understanding how the company is doing as a whole. Accurate data analysis provides relevant data points to the organization. Martin suggests utilizing a "call center" model to identify metrics revealing customer satisfaction (Martin 130).

When discussing performance, demand data, status data, and outcome data are important to record (Martin 128). Demand data measures the incoming work and is expressed in quantity per unit time, an example being “50 customers an hour” (Martin 128). Status data is related to the work happening now, such as  “we’re in phase two of the mining project” (Martin 128). Outcome data analyzes performance over time, ideally against a target performance, like “11.5% product returns” (Martin 128). This data should be recorded in a way that leaders will know immediately how their employees are doing when they see it and where changes need to happen. Before organizations move towards more in-depth data, they need to understand these key data collection areas.

Parallel and stealth data collections are obstacles organizations encounter when there isn’t enough clarity surrounding data collection and who is collecting it. Parallel collections are where more than one person is collecting the same data and stealth collections are where someone is collecting unknown data which causes a loss of important information. Knowing how the data is collected is also critical. Clarity within data collection highlights what’s really being measured and prevents anything from being overlooked or misconstrued in the final production. Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is a commonly misunderstood production line measurement that measures availability, performance, and quality, and is recorded as a percentage (Martin 136). This measurement changes based on the company's work policies and how it is calculated. Depending on the production schedule and where the quality measurement is taking place (end-of-line vs. in-line), this measurement could be anything which takes away its usefulness if not clearly defined.

Presenting accurate data to others requires knowing its source and an easily understandable interpretation. Clearly presenting the data is important to convey results and identify goals to work towards. Using visual diagrams and graphs is the most effective way to share data and set new goals for the company.

When setting new stretch goals, it’s important to be realistic and not set unreasonable goals for employees. Martin uses Wells Fargo as an example in deterring employees to identify business model shortcomings, such as unreasonable targets. This led to illegal accounts being opened as employees were pressured to meet unattainable new account goals. Many misinterpretations of company measurements can be dealt with by actively going to the workplace, also known as a gemba walk. The goal of a gemba walk is to observe day-to-day operation metrics and identify the gaps in accurate goal development. These gaps can also be found in the Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) of a company.

Clearly stated and properly collected data can help an organization identify areas of improvement and help the company save money and resources. This data can also help align the individuals of the organization under a common goal to ensure cohesive work. When people are able to see themselves and their company performing at their desired rate, it drives individual and collective improvement efforts while boosting morale.

Problem Solving-

Martin defines a problem as a “gap in where you are and where you would like to be or need to be.”(Martin 164). People shy away from problems in workplaces riddled with ambiguity, or assume they know the solution before fully understanding a problem. If an organization is having to face the same problems repeatedly, then they may not be tackling the problem methodically enough, or not understand what the problem is. When problem solving, Martin emphasizes defining and understanding problems needs to be prioritized and takes the most time. Having clarity in the workplace will create a culture that promotes active problem solving. Fear of retaliation can often lead to overlooking the root cause of the problem. Approaching problems with an open mind and awareness of personal biases will improve the problem solving culture of an organization, ultimately leading to more efficient solutions. A well defined problem is one that has measurable values.

Karen Martin goes into the problem solving technique she has found most effective referred to as “CLEAR”. 

• Clarifying: This is the longest step for problem solving as it is imperative to not diagnose the solution to a problem before correctly defining the problem. 

• Learning: After accurately identifying the problem, one can collect evidence related to the problem through techniques like gemba walks. Then, one can take this new information and use the most applicable data analysis technique, asking the “the five why’s”.

• Experiment: with countermeasures: In order to ensure no wasted effort, experiments should be well thought out, relatively low risk, relevant, conclusive, and repeatable (Martin 202). Keeping an open mind is important in this step.

• Assess: the results of these experiments and adopt, adapt, or abandon them depending on the results. One should also review what you found in the “learn” phase during this step. 

• Roll: out and reflect on the new process. Make sure the process has an owner responsible for overseeing it and that it’s being properly documented as one continues with the new procedure.

One can use these steps to build problem solving capabilities within their organization and take their time when faced with a problem. It’s better to do it slowly and right the first time than to do it ten times quickly without yielding the desired results.

Conclusion-

Clarity starts with an individual. It’s important for one to have clarity in their personal life before they can have it in their workplace. Karen Martin wrote this book to “highlight clarity enabling practices to define your organization’s purpose and priorities; promote clarity around processes and performance; enable deeper, more effective improvement through disciplined problem solving, and help you develop the clarity pursuing habits you need to model before you can require it of your teams” (Martin 264). Cultivating a culture focused on clarity requires time, especially in organizations with a history of ambiguity.

To achieve clarity, start by identifying the purpose of the organization to unify workers under one goal and communicate that goal within and outside of the organization. Then prioritize the projects within the company so all projects are pointed towards the “True North” of the company. To ensure that employees are not overwhelmed, separate their expected work into their everyday work and extra initiatives. To make sure they can be successful at the tasks they are given, find the processes they are engaged in and decide if they are the most appropriate for the job at hand. By highlighting the current processes, one will also be able to see minute details of a system and identify problem areas. The performance of the company is a good indicator of the health of the company's processes, but there is a need for accurate and relevant data collection/presentation to ensure the processes are being represented clearly. The performance is more than financial figures; it also represents employee productivity and organizational goals in general. When the performance is represented accurately, the organization can move to the last step of establishing clarity which is problem solving. The previous steps of establishing clarity lead to problem solving where an organization can follow the CLEAR model and resolve internal conflict to reach its most transparent and efficient form. 

The goal of establishing clarity has always been “to create an environment in which people can be successful at their jobs.”(Martin 123). Transparency in the workplace is meant to help the organization work more cohesively and allow for growth.