Karen Martin - Clarity First: How Smart Leaders and Organizations Achieve Outstanding Performance

How many of us have felt the tension of the boss asking, So are we all on the same page? Just once I wanted to ask, Which page, boss? The whiteboard, the e-mail summary, the yellow pad? That kind of ambiguity ruled my early work life and led to my deep professional disillusionment. I later learned, and Karen Martin shows us in Clarity First, it doesnt have to be that way!

For me, joy and clarity are inexorably linked as clarity leads not only to getting things done but getting the right things done right, and thus a chance to work with pride, as W. Edwards Deming suggested was all that anyone wants from their work life. Karen Martin provides us, with Clarity First, the path to this kind of joy.

Richard Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovations and author of Joy, Inc.

In a crowded and distracted world, leaders must develop clarity in order to rise above the competition, create better relationships, and grow their business. In this insightful book, Karen Martin gives us a clear vision for clarity.

Sally Hogshead, New York Times bestselling author of Fascinate and How the World Sees You

Imagine the insanity of driving your car through a torrential downpour without windshield wipers. Far too often business leaders drive their company in this very way. In Clarity First, Karen Martin gives us a true gift: the organizational equivalent of high performance wiper blades to cut through ambiguity and achieve diamond-like clarity.

Matthew E. May, author of Winning the Brain Game and The Laws of Subtraction

Karen focuses on, dissects, and gives excellent advice on how to address one of the most important weak points of conventional management: the lack of clarity. The need to operate with clarity permeates every aspect of what leaders and organizations do on a daily basis and is vital to be a high performer.

Jeffrey Liker, bestselling author of The Toyota Way

In an effective organization, everybody should know at any given time what is the most important work they can do to contribute to its success, and how well theyre doing at it. However, in many organizations we find a miasma of overwork, poor strategy and communication, ill-defined or inadequate processes, and frustrated employees. In this outstanding book, Karen Martin tackles the biggest dysfunction addressing organizations todaya lack of clarityand shows how to implement change at every level, supported by her extensive experience and her magisterial command of Lean thinking. This book is essential reading for leaders and managers everywhere.

Jez Humble, coauthor of The DevOps Handbook, Lean Enterprise, and Continuous Delivery

Karen Martin does a masterful job of proving to readers why clarity is the key to outstanding performance, and showing what smart organizations can do to attain and sustain it. She maps a clear path to defining what winning is and how to get there. The chaos-cutting solutions and powerful clarity-enabling practices she shares are keenly relatable and immediately implementable. I was absolutely absorbed by each word, each page, each illuminating example and instructive concept.

Billy R. Taylor, Director of North America Commercial and Off Highway Manufacturing at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company

Karen Martin writes, Clarity exhibits many qualities, the most important of which are coherence, precision, and elegance. All are present in her latest book, Clarity First. Karens take on this timely and timeless topic is accessible, experience-based, relevant, and actionable. It should be required reading for leaders at all levels of an organization.

Julie Winkle Giulioni, coauthor of Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go

Clarity First is a mantra for successboth now and in a future that increasingly rewards clarity and punishes certainty.

Bob Johansen, PhD, Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for the Future and author of The New Leadership Literacies and Leaders Make the Future

Leading in the age of accelerated innovation, complexity, and speed relies on clarity. Clarity of thought, communication, and purpose enables leaders to achieve their desired outcomes, help others exceed their expectations, and create higher performance organizations at scale.

In this book, Karen highlights how clarity enables individuals and organizations to experiment, take necessary risks, and improve decision making to discover the breakthrough innovations of ongoing and future success.

Clarity First will equip you with concrete capabilities and skills to deal with the uncertainty and ambiguity inherent in innovationand win.

Barry OReilly, founder and CEO of ExecCamp and coauthor of Lean Enterprise

Clarity First provides a much-needed conduit between an organizations purpose and performance, linking people development and the alignment of their goals across all levels, and helping create an environment where all employees understand their daily work and why they do it. This excellent book paves the path for long-term success and sustainability within any industry.

Tracey Richardson, founder of Teaching Lean Inc. and coauthor of The Toyota Engagement Equation

At the heart of all good decisions and actions lies one of two factors: luck or clarity. We can hope that our employees, colleagues, or managers get lucky, or we can provide them with the information they need to be successful. Clarity is never easy to achieve. Indeed, every company Ive worked with has had a crisis of clarity. In Clarity First, Karen Martin lays a course to provide a foundation of clarity for your company to build success in from the beginning.

Jim Benson, author of Personal Kanban

Clarity is an essential but far too often overlooked foundation in the quest for successboth for organizations and individuals. Guided by this comprehensive and inspiring book, you will not fail.

Joakim Ahlstrm, author of How to Succeed with Continuous Improvement

While most of Clarity First focuses on organizational clarity, the chapter that describes how to apply the concepts to the individualfrom both personal and professional perspectivesis particularly powerful. As Karen puts it, Organizational clarity begins with you. There are books that deal with self-help, and there are books that describe how to improve organizations, but it is, unfortunately, rare to find a book that truly forces the reader to confront the impact he or she directly has on the organization. Reflecting on this can lead to dramatic personal, and then organizational, clarity and improvement.

Kevin Meyer, cofounder of Gemba Academy and author of The Simple Leader

In this terrific book, Karen Martin not only makes the compelling argument that clarity is neededindeed, keyfor success but also offers many practical tips to learn to gain greater clarity in ones thinking and communicating. In this, clarity is a skill that can be practiced every day to better frame issues for oneself and to engage others and lead ones business to superior performance. A must-read for any serious manager.

Michael Ball, coauthor of The Lean Strategy and The Gold Mine trilogy

Nobody ever said, I dont need more clarity in my company! The reality is clarity can be elusive. But Karen Martin makes this essential outcome accessible, actionable, and possible. My favorite part is its possible in a totally human way. Brilliant!

Shawn Murphy, CEO of Switch & Shift and author of The Optimistic Workplace

I coincidently finished reading Clarity First the day before going to Toyota Kyushu in South Japan. Although not by design, the timing was perfect and made all the examples described in the book even more vivid and validated during the plant visitation. Examples of the opposite are more abundant and not particular to any country or industry, but consequences are never positive. May this book be a guide for leaders who courageously seek achieving clarity first.