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Key Takeaways
- A recent Gallup poll indicates that less than half of employees know what is expected of them, correlating clarity with productivity and successful leadership.
- Clarity is emerging as a foundational strategy, with effective CEOs focusing on clear goals and communication to enable faster achievement of ambitious objectives.
- Moving away from the traditional growth-at-all-costs mentality, especially prevalent in venture capital, can lead to more sustainable business practices and healthier work cultures.
Sustainable growth for a business is a near-ubiquitous goal, but the strategy for achieving that can determine success. Historically, growth-at-all-costs has been the dominant paradigm for company-building. Still, chasing growth can have unintended consequences for leaders who do not also prioritize clarity in their workforce. A 2024 Gallup poll found that less than half (47%) of employees strongly agree they know what is expected of them at work, but clearer expectations have an immediate impact on productivity.
Simply put: Growth-at-all-costs is no longer the measure of a successful leader. Today’s most effective CEOs drive clarity, developing clear priorities, clear goals and clear communication, so their teams can execute with speed and confidence.
In fast-scaling businesses, chaos is the silent killer. Leaders who prioritize clarity over growth not only hit ambitious goals faster but also create healthier cultures where teams thrive and turnover decreases.
A mindset shift from growth-at-all-costs to clarity is both timely and necessary for modern entrepreneurship.
Related: When Your Company Is Growing Fast, Your Culture Is at Risk. Here’s How to Protect It.
Obsession with growth primarily fueled by venture capital
A growth-at-all-costs mindset is common. Take Uber, for example, which burned $25 billion before becoming cash positive. We see venture capital pushing and focusing on lopsided outcomes like this, chasing the 1 or 2 in 10 portfolio company unicorns at the expense of the rest of their portfolio.
For company founders who choose the path of VC for fundraising, this often results in aggressive growth expectations. In some ways, the venture capital mindset is synonymous with growth-at-all-costs. But this hasty expansion can force leaders to spend in an unsustainable way.
In edge cases, this has proven successful, but it does not apply to most companies. For companies that don’t have an outcome like Uber, this aggressive growth strategy leads to burnout, scattered teams and shallow wins in the short term.
Why clarity is better than growth-at-all-costs
A business focusing on clarity to drive growth strives for transparency in all avenues. Of course, effective communication of employee goals is critical to productivity.
In this sense, clarity will always outperform growth because clarity creates capacity. Gallup data shows a strong link between employees knowing what is expected of them and their productivity, retention and well-being. When leaders successfully provide clear and actionable goals to their workforce, employees are more driven to achieve growth, more invested in their objectives and more likely to stay with the company in the long term to continually realize progress.
Additionally, clarity involves having a strong foundation for your business’s mission at the macro level. Knowing what your mission is, clearly establishing an ideal client profile and even defining the ideal employee for the culture you are trying to build are all critical in this endeavor.
Remember: Chasing clarity over growth-at-all-costs is not a one-time event. It’s a repeated and sustained effort. A clarity strategy involves effectively communicating goals on a quarterly and annual basis. When you do this, you can develop a healthier culture with a more effective workforce.
How CEOs should be showing up
Establishing clarity in a business comes from the top down. As CEO, your role is not to add work to everyone’s plate. Rather, it is about defining what is important to the company and supporting executives in making decisions based on that clarity.
Think of the role of CEO instead as Chief Clarifying Officer (CCO). As an effective leader, you work to define a clear and actionable ideology, which directly pilots your quarterly and annual goals.
CEOs who operate in this capacity frequently generate outsized wins. Just look at Steve Jobs and his relentless focus on focus. His explicit principles were clearly translated into objectives for Apple and contributed to its ongoing success.
Clarity drives impactful decision-making on the part of your business’s leaders, which in turn provides employees with a straightforward path to effective work.
Don’t be afraid to choose a different path than the traditional VC, growth-at-all-costs mindset. In addition to clarity, focus on building your business appropriately, spending intentionally to grow the business you want, not the business venture capital wants you to build.
Related: If You Talk Like a Leader, You’ll Win Like a Leader — How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence
Clarity is a growth strategy in and of itself
Ongoing growth will always be an important goal. But it doesn’t have to be a frantic chase at the expense of organization, employee well-being and sustainability. Think of clarity not as the opposite of growth, but the foundation for it.
CEOs who master clarity achieve crucial benchmarks for success. They build companies that scale with purpose — working toward actionable goals in line with core ideologies. They attract the right talent, fostering a productive and contented workforce who understand what is expected of them with a clear path to accomplishing it. And they outlast trends, eschewing a focus on aggressive growth and shallow wins for the foundation necessary for long-term success.
Growth then becomes the natural outcome.
Key Takeaways
- A recent Gallup poll indicates that less than half of employees know what is expected of them, correlating clarity with productivity and successful leadership.
- Clarity is emerging as a foundational strategy, with effective CEOs focusing on clear goals and communication to enable faster achievement of ambitious objectives.
- Moving away from the traditional growth-at-all-costs mentality, especially prevalent in venture capital, can lead to more sustainable business practices and healthier work cultures.
Sustainable growth for a business is a near-ubiquitous goal, but the strategy for achieving that can determine success. Historically, growth-at-all-costs has been the dominant paradigm for company-building. Still, chasing growth can have unintended consequences for leaders who do not also prioritize clarity in their workforce. A 2024 Gallup poll found that less than half (47%) of employees strongly agree they know what is expected of them at work, but clearer expectations have an immediate impact on productivity.
Simply put: Growth-at-all-costs is no longer the measure of a successful leader. Today’s most effective CEOs drive clarity, developing clear priorities, clear goals and clear communication, so their teams can execute with speed and confidence.
In fast-scaling businesses, chaos is the silent killer. Leaders who prioritize clarity over growth not only hit ambitious goals faster but also create healthier cultures where teams thrive and turnover decreases.
