Confusion is expensive. If you’d like to reduce it where you work, I’ve got a Challenge for you!

Confusion is expensive. If you’d like to reduce it where you work, I’ve got a Challenge for you!
AND you can join FREE today at 5pm UK time – link in first comment. One hour sessions today, tomorrow, and Wednesday. Join the conversation on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_leadership-business-activity-7363166533042249729-wKDb?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho

Confusion is expensive. If you’d like to reduce it where you work, I’ve got a Challenge for you!
AND you can join FREE today at 5pm UK time – link in first comment. One hour sessions today, tomorrow, and Wednesday.

When roles, decisions and boundaries are murky, people ‘cope’ – and the system pays. Day two of the Five Core Practices Challenge gets forensic about clarity.

We’ll help you make work visible, define decision rights, and set boundaries that increase discretion and coordination rather than trade the off.

Clear purpose, clear roles, clear tasks – then the freedom to act.

This is unglamorous hashtag#leadership and everyday hashtag#business hygiene, but it is also dignity at work. If we do not specify the work, we collude in the ‘devil’s bargain’ of unaccountability.

The test is simple: can each person answer ‘what’s my job, how do I work with others, how am I doing, what’s next?’ If not, leaders go first to repair it.

In the middle of our work with a leadership team, we realised there was deep confusion about accountabilities, responsibilities, and reporting lines. To create a firm basis for clarity practices, we organised a role process clarification day. Every member of the team was scheduled for one-to-one meetings with everyone they had mutual obligations with to clarify their purpose, role, and relationships. We provided the briefing, role profile templates – to be signed by all the pairs meeting. And we ran ‘air traffic control’, scheduled all the sessions, and sat in to support conversations when needed.

We discovered:
– Two people trying to do the same job, reporting to the same person, who had no idea.
– People in different departments working on different aspects of the same problem – without any coordination.
– Huge, critical gaps in responsibility around core organisational priorities.
– Lack of clarity on reporting lines, accountability, focus, and purpose.
And one team member who actually reported to two bosses – he’d been confused since he started.

It was one of the toughest days we can all remember – constant mental effort to keep a focus on purpose, discretion, technical responsibilities and tasks and responsibilities, balanced with non-stop ‘productive conversations’.
Three months later, participants rated it as one of the most impactful days they’d spent in the last decade.

Sign up for the five-day challenge (link in first comment) – or reply ‘I’m in’ and I’ll send details.

Question: where in your world is ambiguity masquerading as empowerment – and what single boundary would create more real autonomy tomorrow?