Elections and Leadership lessons – 1. Clarity

The other day my colleague and I were facilitating a training session for managers and one of the slides spoke of goals and how they had to be SMART. The acronym is well known and much abused :). S – Specific, M – Measurable, A – Achievable, R – Relevant and T – Time bound.

It’s actually a great acronym that has been used very effectively by Modi in these elections. The target of 272 seats was set nearly a year back, it was SMART ! And the other parties were left floundering because they didn’t know what they were aiming for … Modi was clear that they had to work towards getting a clear majority which 272 seats will give them and he went about getting to that goal. The discussion of the means to reach that goal is for another day and am merely picking one element of the entire context, but it’s important to pick the best lessons.

For any leader, having clarity is super critical for success. While clarity is much underrated as a competency …. All the other fancy competencies will not succeed if there is no clarity of thoughts or direction. It was a treat to watch a non-MBA teach the corporate world some great practical lessons :):).

As a manager develop the ability to get to the root of the issues, simplify it and provide clear directions to your team. Your team will thank you for it and you aren’t wasting time in either politics which arises out of nebulous, unclear situations or in rework. Rework is usually the result of unclear instructions, unclear understanding, unclear processes. Watch any great leader, they would have a lot of clarity and their speech will reflect that clarity. The teams they lead will be able to function better.

I was planning to write one blog to bring out all the leadership lessons that these elections have thrown up, but thanks to Alok, I will make it into a series … Easier to read and refer 🙂

Smart Modi chose the SMART way to become the PM, choose clarity and reach your respective milestones.