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Use these three questions to quickly create clarity and gain commitment with any team or initiative. From Mark’s book, The Hippo Solution.

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If you are leading a project or an initiative or a cross-functional team and you need to
quickly align people so you can focus your effort properly, drop in these three questions
in a meeting to enrich the conversation about where our effort really needs to be focused. First, what are we ultimately trying to achieve? Make sure we all have the same answer to that question. Second, what is most important right now? What do we collectively need to be focused on right now? Third, how can each of us best contribute right now? Drop those three questions in and see how the conversation changes.

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How do you reinforce clarity so you get results and you don’t get distracted? This is straight from our consulting practice and Patrick Lencioni’s book The Advantage.

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How do you reinforce clarity so you get results and you don’t get distracted? Well, that’s about setting up a healthy meeting cadence. Usually everyone’s a little different but setting up a healthy meeting cadence involves a daily check-in where five minutes we get together as a leadership team, a weekly tactical meeting where we don’t get distracted by what’s not important or strategic items – just tactics – three, an ad hoc strategic meeting where we’re taking the time to flesh out those strategic items that may come up, and four is a quarterly off site where we take a step back how are we doing as a team how are we doing with our clarity.

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How do you communicate clarity to the rest of the organization? It’s not sending a bunch of emails out. This is straight from our consulting practice and Patrick Lencioni’s book The Advantage.

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How do you communicate clarity to the rest of the organization? It’s not sending a bunch of emails out, although you can do that. The best method is what Patrick Lencioni recommends when he talks about cascading communication. At the end of each meeting, clarify what we decided, how we’re going to communicate it, and then every person in that room, whether in person or zoom, verbally communicates that to their direct reports who then communicate that to their direct reports and so on. That’s cascading communication communication. That is effective.

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What does it mean to create clarity for the leadership team and thus for the rest of the organization? Well, it’s answering six questions. This is straight from our consulting practice and Patrick Lencioni’s book The Advantage.

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What does it mean to create clarity for the leadership team and thus for the rest of the
organization? Well, it’s answering six questions: why do we exist? how do we behave? what do we do (what business are we in)? what is going to make us successful? what’s most important right now? and who is going to do what? When there’s no daylight between any members of the
leadership team around those six questions, everything changes.

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Hi, I’m Mark Kenny. With all the disruption and all the change and everything going on let me remind you that there are four disciplines that every leader needs to be focused on. This is right out of the Patrick Lencioni playbook. Number one: develop a cohesive leadership team, because the whole rest of the organization suffers when the leadership team isn’t cohesive. Number two: create clarity for the leadership team and in so doing for the rest of the organization. Three: over communicate that clarity to the rest of the organization over and over and four, reinforce that clarity with a healthy meeting cadence.