Decoding the term CLARITY

Most of the business owners try to achieve clarity so that they can make enormous strive in their business. As we have seen in the last article that is the first C required for attaining business success. But then again, what is Clarity? How can one define the term Clarity? How can one say I have achieved clarity? Every business owner wants to achieve it, but how can one achieve something, which they don’t know what it is.  People, who know me, are familiar with the fact that I talk in the language of threes. Threes are not too much but enough to explain things clearly. So there is a formula to get clear about each and everything you wish to get clarity upon, and the formula is

Clarity = WHAT + WHY + HOW

If you want to have clarity about anything ask these three fundamental questions. For example, let’s take the medium in which you read this article. It might be your mobile phone or your laptop. So to understand that medium clearly, you start with asking the question, what is this? You will be surprised to get the answer to that. Then ask why is it made like this? You’ll understand the essential design part of it. Then ask how it enables to read me this article? This gives you a holistic view about the medium you are using to read this and not only that, the clarity now gives you extra info on how all it can be used effectively. As we have seen what clarity is, I feel duty-bound to explain what is lack of clarity is. Lack of Clarity is the act of believing blindly on keywords and jargons of any industry without asking the above said three questions.

The reason I am stating this is that in business there are three important terms that every business owner should get clarity on. But unfortunately no effort is taken by them and they believe those terms/keywords as they are uttered by the influencers in the industry/market/family. Those three words will be discussed below.

Strategy:

This is the Holy Grail and the keystone of any business owner’s dictionary. But what is the meaning of it? Why it is necessary for business success? And how does one go about strategy? These questions should have been asked, but alas, in my experience very few do that. Do you know where this word strategy is used numerous times other than business boardrooms? It is used on the battlefield. It is used in warfare. In that context strategy is the series of steps that leads to the downfall of the enemy, in business terms ‘competitors. That means having a keen focus on opponents and making our moves adjacent to them.  Why this is a flawed one in today’s business context? This happens because in today’s concept business has to focus more on its customers rather than competitors. The flawed understanding is because we lack the holistic view of the business. Indian businesses should be divided into two parts. Businesses that existed before the market economy and businesses that started after the market economy. For the businesses that are started before the market economy, the word strategy in the war zone context is a fit. It has gained enormous capital both monitory and human before the market economy. So all they have to do is safeguard those capitals, not scale. For them, profitability is simply venturing into another business using the brand name. Example ITC, it started as a tobacco company but ventured into F&B, Hospitality, and other industries. But today’s business has to bring in more and fresh people into the business. So they have to focus more on the customers rather than competitors.

Trust

The other most important thing but least understood in building a successful business is the building of Trust. Most business people think that they can get the trust of the people if they are providing good products/service. It is not the case, unfortunately. Trust is something that is built upon. So it means it requires more and more meaningful interactions with the customers. Most business owners I have interacted have no process for that continuous interaction. That only means they don’t have clarity on the term TRUST.

Value:

This is one more thing that is least understood in business. If you speak with any business owner or ask what is the value? They will tell you that value is to be created, or we have to create value to build the trust. It’s partly correct, but even though if you create a value what if the customers have not seen it? The value’s Value is always in the perception of the customer than from the creation of it by the business owner.

So what is the solution? The only strategy you have form is to remove all the obstacles that prevent you as a business owner to understand your customers and their problems better. When you do that, and then find a process in which you seamlessly communicate that problem with them and help them understand their problem better. That is having a continuous meaningful interaction which will help you to build trust. Put your service/product as a solution to the problem people face and help them assess it in a simple hassle free manner so that the customer can perceive the value of doing business with you, rather than looking at the cost of doing business with you.

I Hope this article has given you much-needed Clarity on the topic of CLARITY. Stay tuned for the three components of other 2 C’s I mentioned in the previous article.