“Clarity can be confronting. It shows you what’s really going on and sometimes, we’d rather not look.”

Every consultant eventually learns this: most businesses aren’t paralysed by lack of talent, technology, or opportunity. They’re paralysed by confusion and, more importantly, by their comfort with it.

Confusion, as strange as it sounds, can be convenient. It gives us something to blame when things aren’t working. It gives teams cover for indecision. It allows leaders to say, “We’re still figuring it out,” long after they’ve stopped trying to.

And that’s how companies, good companies, quietly get stuck.

The Familiar Fog

If you’ve ever walked into a meeting where ten smart people leave with twelve different interpretations of what just happened, you’ve seen the comfort of confusion up close.

It’s that foggy zone where:

• Processes overlap “just for now.”
• Roles blur because “we’re a flexible team.”
• Targets shift because “the market’s unpredictable.”
• Everyone’s busy, but no one’s quite sure what they’re busy achieving.

From the outside, it looks chaotic. From the inside, it feels normal.

Because confusion is deceptive, it feels like complexity, and complexity feels like importance. When things are complicated, we assume they must be valuable.

“Confusion gives the illusion of progress. Everyone’s moving, but not necessarily forward.”

Why Businesses Stay in the Fog

So why would any leader, consciously or not, allow confusion to persist?

The truth is: clarity is uncomfortable. It demands ownership. Once you can see the real problem, you can’t hide from it.

Here are the most common (and very human) reasons I’ve seen businesses stay stuck in confusion:

1. It Protects Egos: When goals and roles are unclear, no one can be held fully accountable and that can feel safe. Clarity, on the other hand, shines a light on who’s delivering and who’s coasting. It’s much easier to say “the system’s confusing” than “I dropped the ball.”
2. It Masks Hard Decisions: Confusion delays the uncomfortable conversations: about priorities, budgets, or people. It’s the organisational version of procrastination – perfectly rationalised and professionally disguised.
3. It Feeds Busyness: Let’s be honest, being busy feels good. It signals value. But sometimes that busyness is just activity disguised as productivity. If everyone’s juggling ten things, no one has to explain why the important one isn’t done.
4. It Creates the Illusion of Complexity: Many leaders subconsciously equate complexity with control. “If it’s simple, I must be missing something.” The result? Layer upon layer of process and tools that make the organisation look advanced but act exhausted.

“Confusion is comforting because it spreads responsibility so thin that no one feels its weight.”

The Cost of Comfort

The real danger of comfortable confusion isn’t chaos, it’s inertia. Businesses rarely implode dramatically; they fade into mediocrity through a thousand small hesitations.

Here’s what it costs, quietly, every day:

• Lost Confidence: When teams don’t know what matters most, they stop making decisions. Initiative dies first.
• Wasted Potential: The loudest problems always get attention, while quiet inefficiencies multiply unnoticed.
• Customer Drift: Misalignment inside eventually shows up outside, in missed expectations, inconsistent experiences, and declining loyalty.
• Talent Burnout: High performers don’t thrive in fog. They either disengage or disappear.

By the time confusion becomes visible in your KPIs, it’s already rooted deep in your culture.

 

A Story I’ve Seen Too Often

A few years ago, I worked with a mid-sized tech firm that insisted their biggest problem was “communication.” Everyone said it. Leadership agreed. Teams echoed it. So, they invested in tools – Slack integrations, reporting dashboards, team check-ins, everything but clarity.

During one workshop, I asked each department head a simple question:
“What’s the company’s biggest priority for the next six months?”

I got nine different answers.

Not because anyone was incompetent, but because no one wanted to challenge what they thought they understood. They were comfortable operating in parallel realities.

When we stripped away assumptions, documented the real priorities, and agreed on ownership, something shifted. Suddenly, everyone could see the same picture. And clarity, as it often does, created momentum.

They didn’t need more communication. They needed agreement on what was worth communicating.

The Turning Point: Choosing Clarity

Breaking the comfort of confusion starts with a decision – not to have all the answers, but to stop pretending the fog is normal.

At Vani Malik Consulting, we call it the Clarity Threshold – that moment when a leader says, “I’m ready to see what’s really happening, even if it’s uncomfortable.”

Here’s how we guide clients through it:

1. Name the Fog: Start by asking – What are we unclear about that we’ve learned to tolerate? You’d be surprised how many long-standing frustrations begin with unspoken uncertainty.
2. Replace Assumptions with Agreements: Assumptions sound harmless, “I thought marketing was doing that,” “I assumed IT already checked.” But assumptions kill efficiency. Replace them with explicit agreements – who owns what, by when, and how it’s measured.
3. Simplify the System, Amplify the Signal: If your CRM, dashboards, or processes require a manual to operate, it’s time to streamline. Every extra step between data and decision dilutes clarity.
4. Reward Candour: When people speak up about confusion, thank them. Don’t punish the messenger; empower them. Most organisations don’t need more direction, they need more honesty.

“Clarity isn’t a leadership trait. It’s a leadership choice.”

The Irony of Progress

Here’s the irony: the moment clarity arrives, confusion briefly gets louder.
Suddenly, everyone sees what they’ve been avoiding. Priorities clash. Metrics conflict. It feels worse before it gets better.

That’s progress. It’s the organisational equivalent of decluttering your home – chaos on the floor before order on the shelf. And the leaders who lean into that discomfort? They’re the ones who build lasting growth.

When Confusion Disguises Itself as Collaboration

A final thought: confusion often hides behind good intentions.

Ever noticed how “cross-functional collaboration” sometimes translates to “no one’s really sure who’s responsible”? Or how “agile” becomes a euphemism for “we keep changing direction”?

Collaboration isn’t about doing everything together, it’s about doing the right things together.
Without clear accountability, collaboration becomes conversation. And conversation, without decision, becomes drift.

As one of my favourite quotes goes:

“If everyone owns the outcome, no one owns the action.”

Clarity Is a Competitive Advantage

Leaders often assume clarity is an internal efficiency goal, but in reality, it’s a market differentiator.

Customers feel it when your teams are aligned. They experience it when your brand promise matches delivery. And they trust it when your decisions are consistent and confident.

That’s what turns clients into advocates, and employees into believers.

At Vani Malik Consulting, we help businesses break the comfort of confusion by designing frameworks that connect strategy to execution, people to purpose, and complexity to clarity.

Because growth doesn’t begin with more effort. It begins when you finally see the fog for what it is and decide to walk out of it.

“Clarity is not what happens when you slow down; it’s what makes you worth following when everyone else is running in circles.”