Seeking Clarity

I was thinking about the dangers of navigating uncertainty. I realized that it applies to so many aspects of one's life that it can have a dramatic impact. Let's start with how this thought came to be. I was recalling a time early in my management experience where I would take unclear answers and make more than a few assumptions to paint the whole picture. When asked about it by other stakeholders it only took me a few occasions to realize that my understanding was not as close as I thought to reality.

It's one of those things I picked up quickly, the moment something is not clear you have to follow up. If something is not immediately clear to you it won't be for others, this proved to be true pretty much 100% of the times (anecdotal sure, but that's all I got for this). I made a habit of this, if a document is not clear I ask about it, if a commitment is too vague I ask about it, if an explanation is poor I ask about it.

As a manager this helped me tremendously for planning work, agreeing on projects, and delineating requirements. It is also my responsibility to bring clarity and communicate clearly. If any doubt is out of the picture, you build better relationships, you make for a more productive team, ... . But this is true for so many other things. If you think you understood something but cannot explain it clearly, you should go revisit that. This is a key element of learning, the ability to explain it simply is a sign of you developing a deeper understanding. So now we covered both leadership and learning. Inevitably this affects your growth. As an IC if the requirements of a project are not evident, you might end up building the wrong thing. So it's a great habit to get rid of any doubt as early as possible.

I find that successful leaders and individuals in general never settle for a foggy future/explanation they aggressively seek clarity and feel accountable for it.

Thoughts

I truly believe that seeking clarity is life changing. Sometimes it forces you to face truths in life you were too scared to find out, it helps building stronger and healthier relationships. To give you a trivial example, statistically (again no source but I'm sure you'll agree with me) couples fight over money a lot and it's a main driver of arguments. With my partner we clarified this as soon as we moved in together and that system we build and agreed on still works today after over 10 years. I've seen major projects taking a completely different turn based on one comment wanting more clarity. I had people on my team understanding how to move to the next step after we clarified action items together. So look around you and bring clarity wherever you can.