Today we’d like to introduce you to Ann Latham.
Ann, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I could start with tales of selling minnows, driving school buses, and teaching math, but that only demonstrates my reluctance to give up my freedom and settle down to year-round employment. My technical background – mathematics and software engineering to be exact – fueled my career and I spent a number of years developing software for cool projects like simulating earthquakes and controlling the generation and transmission of electrical power.
But while I was really good at what I did, I wanted to reduce chaos and make life easier for fellow employees at my company and so I got into management.
After developing my soft skills leading large, cross-functional, cross-divisional improvement projects, the next logical step in my drive to reduce chaos was to help more than one company at a time. So I read some books on starting my own consulting firm and decided to go for it.
Before quitting my corporate job, I asked a variety of people I’d worked with what it was I did unusually well that was most uncommon. All of the responses described my ability to take in large quantities of information and extract the kernel that made it possible to move things forward, quickly and with broad support. As a result, I named my company Uncommon Clarity and I’ve been creating transformative clarity ever since.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There are always obstacles, aren’t there?
The first one I created for myself by moving from Minnesota to Massachusetts and leaving any network I had far behind!
The second was taking those first steps and sticking my head out into the world as a consultant. I remember the first few times I told someone my company was called Uncommon Clarity. I was sure the next words out of my mouth would be complete gibberish!
The third stemmed from my being a Scandinavian, introverted, engineering sort of person who hated networking and public speaking but knew I had to do both. Thanks to a stint in Toastmasters, I now love sharing my ideas with groups of all sizes and do so frequently. I have yet to learn to love networking!
The fourth was discovering that people put clarity in the same vague category of goodness occupied my mom and apple pie. They know it is a good thing, but they have no idea how much they are lacking. Nor do they realize the tremendous capacity of clarity to improve profit, performance, and productivity while also engaging and empowering employees.
I could go on, but those alone meant I spent 99% of my time out of my comfort zone that first year!
Please tell us about Uncommon Clarity®.
I create clarity. It starts with strategic clarity and then focuses on the way people think and work. Organizations expect their value delivery processes to be defect free and super-efficient. If you could say the same for all their other processes, which consume up to 90% of the time for employees a step or more removed from value delivery work, they would be significantly more profitable and agile, and would have a more engaged and committed workforce.
This applies to organizations of every type, which is why my clients represent more than 40 industries and range from for-profit giants, such as Boeing, Medtronic, and Hitachi, to nonprofit organizations as diverse as Public Television, Smith College, and Zoo New England.
I think I am most proud of my writing and the body of work I’ve created. I’ve written more than 600 articles, over 75 of which were as an expert blogger for Forbes.com, and many of which are loaded with original ideas. My most recent book, The Clarity Papers – The Executive’s Guide to Clear Thinking and Better, Faster Results just came out in January and contains my best content.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I were to start over, I would write The Clarity Papers sooner. Despite my many articles, it wasn’t until I published The Clarity Papers that I made it easy for people to really wrap their heads around the true power of clarity. All those disconnected snippets are interesting, but collectively they pack a far greater punch.
It’s really exciting at this point to be spreading my passion for clarity and opening eyes to its potential far beyond the organizations I work with directly!
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.UncommonClarity.com
- Phone: 617-939-9654
- Email: info@uncommonclarity.com
- Other: http://www.forbes.com/sites/annlatham
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