June 30, 2026 | Issue Archive
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Confusion, Clarity, and What Comes Next
Today's the last day of Q2.
Half the year, gone. 🤯
That makes it the perfect moment to lift your head and ask the question that's easy to skip when you're heads-down:
Heading into the second half of 2026, what do you and your team actually need most?
Over the last several weeks, a version of that answer has emerged from my keynote audiences.
As I shared last week, across three very different organizations—a century-old manufacturer, a post-merger technology company, and a room full of AI engineers—I asked leaders and teams to identify the one default costing them the most.
The answer, every time:
Confusion.
What that really points to is the need for clarity—a word that keeps surfacing.
Since writing last week, two speaker friends I respect have been circling it from completely different angles as well.
Mike Evans wrote about what happens when clarity disappears: people don't quit all at once. They question. Then doubt. Then quietly disengage.
Mike Robbins recently asked his audience what their teams need most heading into the second half of the year. The top answer wasn't trust. It wasn't communication. It wasn't appreciation.
It was clarity.
Different rooms.
Different industries.
Different research.
Same signal.
That's exactly why Clarity over Confusion is one of the five intentional choices of Radical Adaptability. Confusion is the cost. Clarity is the choice that answers it.
So if confusion is the hidden cost showing up across industries, the next question isn't simply, "How do leaders communicate more clearly?"
It's more personal than that.
Where does clarity actually come from?
We often assume clarity flows downhill. The leader gets clear, communicates the vision, and everyone else falls into line.
Sometimes that's true.
But a lot of the time, the confusion isn't on the org chart.
It's in our own heads.
And the tricky part is that it rarely feels like confusion.
It feels like thinking.
Confusion isn't the absence of thought. It's the presence of too much of it.
It looks like the fourth strategy deck.
The options you replay at 2:00 a.m.
The fourteen new ideas filling another legal pad.
It looks like effort.
It feels productive.
It's actually neither.
It's your brain generating activity instead of direction.
Here's why you can't just push through it.
Your brain takes in around 11 million bits of information a second and lets you consciously notice about 50. Under pressure, the filter picking those 50 has one job—scan for threat.
So instead of asking, What's true? it starts asking, What's dangerous?
Those aren't the same question.
"What's dangerous?" isn't the question to pull you out of a hard season.
"What's actually true?" and "And what matters most?" are.
How to find the clarity you seek
The goal isn't more analysis.
It's better orientation.
One of my favorite examples comes from Best Buy.
When Hubert Joly became CEO, the guiding question wasn't, "How do we beat Amazon?"
He asked something much simpler:
What business are we really in?
Not the title on the building.
Not the org chart.
Who do we serve?
What problem do we solve?
What are we actually here to do?
Best Buy realized they weren't selling electronics.
They were enriching lives through technology.
Once that became clear, thousands of decisions became easier because everyone was finally pointed in the same direction.
This Ends Now
Stop mistaking motion for clarity.
Stop the endless spin that disguises itself as strategy simply because it's exhausting enough to feel like work.
As we head into the second half of the year, you probably don't need another strategy deck.
You need enough clarity to know which one matters.
This Moment Matters
First, get to solid ground.
Draw a line down the middle of a blank page.
On the left, write:
What's actually true?
Facts only. Things you could prove.
On the right, write:
What am I afraid is true?
The assumptions.
The predictions.
The 3:00 a.m. stories your brain keeps rehearsing.
You'll probably discover that much of the weight you've been carrying lives in that second column.
Naming it doesn't magically solve it. But it gives you enough solid ground to stop reacting to the right column and start orienting from the left.
Next, calibrate the compass.
That's where Joly's question comes in: What business are we really in? Once you're standing on what's true, that's the question that points you in the right direction.
From there, the next step appears much clearer.
If you missed last week's cross-industry findings, you can still grab the Radical Adaptability Special Report here. It dives deeper into why leaders across very different organizations all identified the same hidden obstacle.
Standing here today, though, you've got six months and a clean page in front of you.
Default is not destiny—but you have to see clearly where you're standing to choose a new one.
Up we go—
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