Notes on Leadership (4): Simpler vs clearer, or Consulting 101

Guess who¹:

Delivering clarity does not mean making things simpler. Making things simpler may not help. There may be inherently complex or complicated issues that need to be understood and cannot be usefully simplified. But what you can do and what you should try to do is to make them easier to understand and clearer, so that people can act on that understanding.

So your mission, Ethan (which is now a gender-neutral name) is:

• aggressively remove ambiguity and business bullshit
• create clarity in existing goals
• make sure people understand what it is you do, by making it super clear how what you do contributes to those goals

---

1. It’s Dan Hon.↩︎

---

---

---

---