The $1.2 Trillion Cost of Confusion

In moments of uncertainty, communication alone isn’t enough. What employees and leaders crave is clarity.

Our new normal is navigating transitions, transformations, and disruptions. Clarity matters more than ever.

The Real-World Difference

Picture this. You open your email inbox and see: “System Issue.”

Now imagine instead: “Payment Processing Outage—Orders Delayed.”

The first creates questions and uncertainties about whether it’s meant for you— noise. The second creates understanding of implications and how you think about the future—clarity.

The difference is trust, productivity, and confidence.

Communication vs. Clarity

Words shape understanding.

Communication pushes messages. It’s passive. Most companies communicate to check boxes, push ideas, and transmit information.

Clarity creates shared understanding. It’s active. When companies focus on creating clarity, the goal is to accelerate understanding, alignment, and action.

And that requires someone accountable for it. Enter the Chief Clarity Officer: the guardian of shared understanding, responsible for ensuring employees know where the company is going, why it matters, and what’s expected of them.

Cost of Miscommunication

Ambiguity is uncomfortable, and most importantly, it’s expensive. It slows down decisions, sparks unnecessary meetings, and erodes confidence.

While workplace challenges stem from multiple sources, numbers reveal patterns. Consider these recent findings.

• Miscommunication costs U.S. businesses $1.2 trillion annually. (Grammarly- 2024 State of Business Communication Report)

• Global employee engagement has fallen to 21%, its lowest point since the pandemic started, leading to $438 billion in lost productivity. (Gallup-2025 State of the Global Workplace)

• Only 46% of U.S. employees clearly know what’s expected of them. (Gallup-*S. Employee Engagement Sinks to 10-Year Low)*

• More than a quarter of employees report burnout. (Gallagher-*2025 Workforce Trends Report)*

• Knowledge workers spend 60% of their time on “work about work” which includes—searching for information, chasing updates, shifting tools, and more. (Asana Anatomy of Work)

Every minute employees spend clarifying expectations or chasing information is time not spent on creative value.  The results are slower execution, higher turnover, and billions in hidden costs.

Your company’s story can be different. Here’s what clarity in practice looks like.

From Problem to Practice

While every company will approach clarity differently based on its culture and complexity, five disciplines consistently separate companies with high clarity from those drowning in confusion:

1. Make Clarity a Strategic Filter – Test every major decision before rollout with a 3-question clarity test:

   • Can frontline managers explain this in under 2 minutes?

   • Does it create conflicting priorities?

   • What’s the simplest way to communicate this? If you can’t answer clearly, the decision isn’t ready.

2. Tie Clarity to Business Metrics – Track clarity like you track revenue. A quarterly clarity scorecard could include:

   • Days from announcement to full team alignment

   • Percentage of projects delayed due to unclear requirements

   • Employee clarity index via pulse surveys—I know what’s expected of me

   • Reduction in follow-up meetings scheduled to clarify.

3. Institutionalize Clarity Moments – Build clarity checkpoints into your operating rhythm at predictable moments of confusion.

   1. After quarterly earnings → Required 48-hour translation window: convert from board-level strategy into team-level action before cascading begins.

   2. During reorganizations: →Mandatory “clarity pause”—no announcements go out until you’ve tested messaging with a diagonal slice of employees (frontline, middle management, and senior leaders

   3. As strategy shifts → Every executive must answer: What stays the same? before what changes.

4. Simplify to Amplify – Institute a Rule of Three across the organization:

   • No team can have more than three active strategic priorities at once.

   • No initiative can have more than three critical success measures.

   • No communication can have more than three key takeaways. More than three is code for “we have no priorities.”

Clarity emerges when you’re willing to say “not now” to good ideas in service of great execution.

Culture of Clarity – Make “Did your team understand it?” a leadership performance metric.

• During performance reviews, audit team understanding.

• Use a simple “teach-back” method: randomly select three employees from each leader’s org and ask them to explain the company’s direction, their team’s role, and their individual priorities.

• Leaders whose teams can’t clearly articulate this have a clarity problem, and it affects their ratings.

The Business Advantage

Start here: In your next executive meeting, ask each leader to explain your company’s top three priorities in under 60 seconds. If you get six different answers, you’ve discovered why clarity deserves a C-Suite owner.

The data proves clarity matters. Companies that institutionalize it move faster, retain talent longer, and execute with precision. Those that don’t are leaving productivity and profitability on the table.

Clarity won’t fix itself. Is your organization willing to make someone accountable for it?