Clarity > Certainty

Like all entrepreneurs, they started the business to create a better future - improve lifestyle, do something meaningful and on some level to build a legacy.

But that wasn't how things were working out.

Having started as a database publishing company before the likes of InDesign, the founders of PhotoBooks built a 7-figure company, but even with a multiple 6-figure income, it was a trudge. After more than 20 years, cracks in the foundations were becoming more obvious. Revenue was a roller coaster, operations felt slapped together despite their best efforts and team cohesion was dicey at best.

It was the overwhelming pile of simultaneous issues that made it so emotionally difficult to deal with.

• The market forced a pivot, but the old, dying model was 80% of their revenue.
• Shiny object syndrome had diluted their product focus.
• Sales were flat, rep turnover high, and costs rising with ACV & LTV way too small.
• Departmental silos, lack of metrics or intentional rhythms made everyone feel helpless.

Theirs was a business slowly beginning to die. And it caused strains outside of work as well. Stress lead to fighting and being too tired to engage effectively at home. Waking up in the middle of the night with anxiety about how the next payroll would be met. After two decades and millions in revenue, this wasn't supposed to be the way it went.

Like a final gut punch, one of the founders got "the call" - he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma and would spend the next year fighting for his life.

This is what I stepped into as the new President/CEO of the company. It should have been the end.

Instead, over the next 3 years the founder overcame cancer, we turned the company around completely, selling it to Doctor.com in 2017 and changing the lives of the founders and many of the employees. In 3 short years, we were able to nearly triple the average revenue per client, increase operational efficiency by 37%, shed all unprofitable product lines and launch 2 new and more aligned products that grew to be dominant in the market, stabilize revenue streams and all at more than double the profitability. Seven years later (as of 2024), these products are still in use in the market and growing.

What changed? Anyone who tells you there was a single secret to something like this is either foolish or lying. But there is something that every successful company or turnaround has in common.?

Clarity.?

When you start a company or find yourself in hard times on the journey, circumstances create uncertainty. Messaging, product market fit, sales methods and processes, choosing strategies, hiring, firing, cash flow, operational capacity and more are all unknowns. Depending on your situation, you may even have family calling into question what you're doing.

In this moment, the natural human reaction is to solve the problem of uncertainty with its opposite - certainty. We naturally want to get more information, learn more about strategies and tactics and see where the market is going to get ahead of future issues and opportunities.

Here's the rub - certainty is just a tantalizing lie.

The problem is certainty requires knowing the future and all the variables beforehand. Experience helps to know generally what the path ahead looks like and some best practices. But no one knows exactly what will happen in the industry, marketplace, competition, technology, public policy, family situation, etc. environment you are building in.

Think about some of these "certain" success stories:

• Carly Fiorina joined Hewlett-Packard after a very successful career at AT&T and Lucent Technologies, certain her strategic planning skills would make HP more competitive. She was forced to resign 6 years later.
• John Sculley was a raging success at PepsiCo. His prowess in marketing and disciplined corporate leadership was certain to take Apple to the next level. After a decade of struggling, he left the company and it nearly died.
• Ron Johnson was a certain bet in 2011 when he brought the overwhelmingly successful strategy of Apple stores to J.C. Penney as the new CEO. Two years later - he was kicked out as a failure.

i.e., certainty is an illusion...and...unnecessary.

Every situation in business, and I'd argue in life, where uncertainty is high people crave clarity. Clarity of purpose. Clarity of direction. Clarity of values.

Think of wartime scenarios. No, business is NOT war. But war is an extreme where leadership and strategic thinking are put to the ultimate test. This can be highly instructive to leaders in other contexts.

In war, nearly nothing is certain. Leaders who try to promote certainty in wartime are just pushing propaganda and inevitably fall into controlling false narratives instead of actually leading.

On the other hand, leaders like Winston Churchill never promised a certain outcome. Instead, he cast a clarity of vision that compelled a nation to turn the tide in a war that by all rights should have ended their story.

Now, don't mishear me. I'm not saying that clarity always wins. You can be clear and wrong. You can be clear, right and still lose. But to win, you must be clear. To lead in uncertainty, clarity is the only path to victory.

So what is clarity and what, exactly, must you be clear about? I mean, you already did the mission, vision, values thing. See that framed paper on the wall?

Clarity can and should include your mission, vision and values. However, most companies have built these to be aspirational versus operational. In other words, these are things they would love to be but aren't actually a part of their daily DNA. On the other hand, companies with teams that are clear know precisely:

• Why we exist, why we're needed and important.
• What the company is good at - and what it isn't.
• How they'll win in the current environment.
• Where each role fits into the "how we win" plan.
• Who they serve in the market and what that person cares about. (Hint: it's not your product.)
• When the next deadline is for checking outcomes and adjusting.

Even the order of these can be important. But that's for another day.

Clarity can be hard because while clarity on some things (why we're here and core competencies) don't change, others do. What matters right now, how to build or iterate the systems in the company for the current needs, where people fit in given the context, etc. are all iterative and progressive. Clarity isn't static because the facts and realities of situations change.

As a tangible example, what did this look like at Connect Healthcare? (We rebranded PhotoBooks for a host of reasons.) It wasn't perfect. Not always even as good as it sounds here. But it was highly effective, and we all felt it.

• Why - We existed to help people find the right providers for them. It's needed because there are good doctors and bad ones (sorry, but that's real). And sometimes good doctors that aren't a good fit for you, but unless you have personal connections it's hard to tell which is which. This was our true north.
• Who - We serve healthcare marketers and their patients. We had personas, Jobs to be Done workups, tagline statements and more integrated throughout our product development and messaging systems to keep us on track with these specific audiences.?
• What - We're good at database design, UX and data analytics. All else is noise.
• How - We were going to win by designing Find a Doctor systems like an eCommerce experience. For patients, search options that allow granular research on what matters to them and consolidated reviews on providers from patients across the web. For hospitals, modern tools to capture and integrate data into the profiles as well as manage the reputation of their providers where reviews are collected. This also meant we were NOT going to build websites, develop a scheduling system for appointments, or any number of other things that were adjacent but outside of our zone.
• Where - Every sales person, CS rep, project manager, product team, operations and finance person knew exactly where their role fit into what we were trying to accomplish. This message was built into job descriptions, hiring processes and regular 1:1 meetings as well as the times when we just "walked the floor." And we had metrics to help everyone know if they were winning.
• When - Weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual checkpoints with meetings were in place to give us the ability to put our heads down and work, make minor tweaks along the way and big shifts after we had results to avoid either the "focus of the week" syndrome or the "we've always done it this way" stagnation. Real talk - this was the hardest to stick with.

The why and the what are critical to focusing product development efforts, sales & marketing messaging, and maintaining a healthy level of perspective on the meaning of our work and who we serve.

The how and where create clarity of action and expectations, which increases team satisfaction and decreases stress and burnout.

The who keeps efforts within a focused set of products and messaging relevant to those you serve.

Finally, the when gives everyone permission to put blinders on and run hard with the plan until the next checkpoint. Each checkpoint has a purpose to either refine, make large changes or throw out the current plan based on evidence and changing conditions in the environment.

Uncertainty still roamed our halls and sat down in meetings with us every week. It was our clarity that allowed everyone on that team walk out of meetings with energy even in the face of that uncertainty. Clarity overcomes uncertainty because it puts the team in the driver's seat with an intentionality of focus on what we could control.

There's more to building a successful and growing business than clarity, but there's nothing more foundationally important. Clarity is like a leading domino, the momentum from that first domino makes all the rest of them fall so much easier.

When you and your team have clarity, challenges can be fun again. Hope for success, meaning and even legacy can be restored. In a word, it restores joy. Joy isn't ruled by circumstances like happiness. Joy comes from a much deeper, more anchored place. Even in the hard moments or stressful situations, joy sticks around where happiness runs.

The risk here is that you may want to run into your office and have a big meeting where everyone is going to "get clarity" for your business.

Like someone inspired to get fit who buys all the equipment and grocery shops for all the right foods to achieve through a burst of excitement, this is a pathway littered with failure. White-knuckled sheer force of will has a place, but without systems most will flame out before the fire becomes sustainable.?

Successful companies and people design systems and rhythms to accomplish goals versus herculean one-time efforts. Systems win over one-off efforts because they build intentionality into the daily life of your team.

If you're the business owner, start with clarity for your own why and what gives you energy. Then build clarity for the Why, Who, What, How, Where, When of your company and team. Design them into the systems you use to hire, to onboard, to build products, to manage clients and how you run meetings, reviews and planning. Clarity framed on the wall is useful. Clarity integrated into your daily flow is crucial.

Start small and collaboratively. These should be active and living, part of how you operate. Build them into your rhythms. If you don't have rhythms, now is a great time to start. From what and how you build products to who and how you hire as well as your positioning and messaging into the market, the output of clarity forms the foundation of how you navigate uncertainty to winning.

Clarity is foundational - and hard. What next step will you take toward restoring the joy that clarity brings?

PS - I use my experience both in previous companies and those I run now to help other owners and executives gain clarity in their business. If you're ready for that kind of help, reach out.