As I mentioned earlier, I recently had the honor of sharing a stage with Admiral Harry Harris, the US ambassador to South Korea. It was interesting to hear what he had to say, especially when comparing the similarities and differences between public and private leadership.

Admiral Harris’s military background was apparent when he talked about how important it is to give clear guidance. He said, “People follow orders better than they read minds.”

This really stood out to me. Imagine how catastrophic it is in a military situation when people aren’t absolutely sure what they’re expected to do. And I’ve also seen disasters unfold in the business world when clear direction wasn’t given.

This notion of clear guidance is also highlighted in a new book called Go Long: Why Long-Term Thinking Is Your Best Short-Term Strategy. It’s a really short book—just 100 pages—and is a series of case studies that give a history of times when important decisions created huge turnarounds for companies.

There’s one story in the book about Alan Mulally, who was CEO first at Boeing and then later at Ford Motor Company, where he is credited with the company’s $48 billion turnaround. It talks about how he kept a handful of rules on a single card and repeated them over and over. He used this same card for 45 years!

This clarity made it easy for employees to follow the rules and for managers to hold them accountable. In fact, Go Long points out that Mulally rarely had to fire anyone. His clarity around the rules, and his insistence on holding employees to them, caused people who couldn’t change to realize it and to leave voluntarily.

Clarity enables engagement and drives execution. People like clear boundaries. Vagueness and uncertainty (or mind reading, as Admiral Harris said) create anxiety and stress and make mistakes far more likely to happen. Most people truly want to do good work, and they like leaders who make that easy for them.

Clarity also promotes accountability, fosters teamwork, improves morale, and cuts down on workplace drama. For all of these reasons, clarity accelerates results and boosts the overall performance of your company.

Many times we think we’re being clear when we’re not. What we think we said and what others actually heard can be shockingly different. Great leaders realize this truth. That’s why they make sure that people are 100 percent clear on the rules. Then, they reinforce those rules at every opportunity. They live by them and make sure others do, too.

A big part of creating clarity inside your company comes down to those structural building blocks we discuss later in the book. Companies with a lot of structure in place—by which I mean foundational pieces like mission, vision, and value statements, official written standards of behavior, a system for setting and communicating clearly defined goals, an objective evaluation system that measures performance on those goals, and so forth—tend to be good at creating clarity.

But even if you haven’t yet put all the building blocks in place (or if you’re still working on them) you can take a cue from what worked for Alan Mulally and Ford. A few tips for making their approach work inside your company:

• Spend time really thinking about the rules and values that matter most to you. Boil them down until you have a short list—maybe five or so—of guidelines. (Use simple wording. Nothing fancy.)
• Give a lot of specificity. Don’t just tell them what to do, tell them how to do it and put some hard timelines in place. In the book Switch, Chip and Dan Heath tell the story of how Don Berwick, CEO of IHI (Institute for Healthcare Improvement) was frustrated by the number of deadly medical errors. He announced a prevention initiative, declaring that in 18 months, he wanted to save 100,000 lives. (His actual language was June 14, 2006, at 9 a.m.) To achieve this, he proposed six specific interventions hospitals should undertake and made it easy for them to participate. By the deadline, 122,300 lives had been saved. The Heath brothers credit his clarity and specificity for surpassing the goal. Their expression that “Some is not a number and soon is not a time,” is one that really reminds us to get clear on expectations.
• Share them with the entire company. Post them on the website and your break room wall. Send them out in emails and texts. Maybe even write them on a card like Alan Mulally.
• Any time an employee doesn’t understand a rule, repeat it. Don’t worry that you’ve already said it. People will be grateful for the clarity.
• Always hold yourself accountable to the rules. Integrity is crucial for leaders. Nothing will make the rules more clear than when leaders model the behavior.
• Hold others accountable, too. Because you’ve made it clear what the rules are, you can assume that when people don’t live up to them, it’s an issue of “skill” or “will.” If it’s a skill issue, provide the necessary training. If it’s a will issue, then as tough as it is, you have to let the person go. (Nothing drives high performers away as quickly as low performers who go undealt with.)
• Take advantage of teachable moments. Use mistakes or mishaps as a way to hone clarity. It can be a real learning opportunity and a way for leaders to clarify things that might not be crystal clear. Use the opportunity to narrate which rule or value might have been compromised. It may even spotlight the need for a new guideline.

A commitment to clarity is at the heart of every high-performing business. When everyone knows the rules, respects them, and relentlessly follows them, you can achieve amazing things. Also, learn to recognize when clarity is a problem and fix it right away. In Switch, the Heath brothers say that what looks like resistance or pushback might just be a lack of clarity. If people don’t know exactly what you mean, it will be hard for them to get things right.