Clarity for Prioirites

Peter Winick here with Thought Leadership Leverage — one of the key things that strikes me in my work is the connection between clarity, effective prioritization, and success. Clarity is not exactly a binary state, but it isn’t something that exists on a continuum either.

To gain clarity, I ask my clients the following:

1) What’s your platform?

What do you expect people to be able to do, think, act, or behave differently as a result of being exposed to your content?

2) What markets are you serving or would you like to be serving?

3) What offerings do you have or are in the process of creating that are derived from your content?

4) How are you struggling to get your message to a broader audience?

If they can specifically answer that first question the other questions are pretty easy. Many fall into the trap of believing their content could be all things to all people. Theoretically, that may be the case for some content, but in practice that rarely works. In the world of content there are no formulaic answers that work for everyone.

You can’t serve the Fortune 100 and the housewife from Idaho at the same time with the same content in the same format. There are some that focus very narrowly on a specific industry, there are others that focus on a specific population in an organization. Some do quite well with specific roles or specific types of individuals based on a life event or a personality trait. The list is almost endless as long as the content resonates with your audience and you can clearly identify the sustainable behavior changes that can be attributed to your work.

On the other hand, if you lack market clarity it becomes very difficult to align your priorities and objectives. In other cases, thought leaders have offerings that aren’t clearly defined. If you can’t clearly articulated what you do, who it’s for, and what will happen after, then guess what? Clients won’t beat a path to your door to buy your solutions.

Others have a very clear product strategy. They can defend one solution and explain why they chose that over others. Those who have the greatest degree of clarity over how clients can obtain the largest impact from their work seem to be growing and thriving while those who don’t are lucky to just survive.

Now here’s the kicker: everyone is very busy and has a list of things they are doing and things they’d like to do, but those who have the greatest clarity are able to logically justify why they’re doing what they are and why they aren’t doing other things.

Those that don’t have the clarity are (for the most part) “busier” but activity will never equal achievement.

It’s wise to take a step back and audit your priorities. It’s even wiser to do so in order to have clarity that is needed around the markets you would like to serve, how you can best serve them and then view all of your activities through a clear lens.

What’s helped you find clarity? Share your suggestions in the comments below, and don’t forget to subscribe to Thought Leadership Leverage for more great content. Thanks.