It’s always been a bit challenging for me to explain to people what I do, especially in my role as a visual facilitator. Sometimes they’re familiar with the field, but other times I’ve gotten puzzled looks and questions like, “Oh, you’re like a courtroom illustrator?” Or “So you’re going to do caricatures of us?” Or (my favourite): “An artist, eh? So we’re all gonna have to hold hands and sing Kumbaya?” (For the record, the answers to the above are: (1) Well, no. (2) Nope. (3) Why is it always Kumbaya?? Can’t we sing something else?)

So I finally came up with a succinct (if slightly tongue-in-cheek) descriptor: I tell people I’m their “CCO for hire.” And what is a CCO, they ask? Well, organizations have CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and various other Chief Something Officers, so my job is to be the CCO: the Chief Clarity Officer. That generally gets an appreciative chuckle – partly because it’s unexpected, and partly because people get it. When I’m recording or facilitating a meeting using words combined with images, it’s not about me making art: it’s about bringing clarity to the conversation. Helping people see what they’re saying so they can understand themselves and each other better.

And if there is anything we need in the workplace – and in the world – it’s clarity. Every day we encounter words we think we all understand: words like leadership, sustainability, innovation, best practices, respect, and so on. But unlike things (a table, a flower, a camera), these are all abstractions. Abstractions that are so embedded in our vocabulary that we don’t see how subjective and ambiguous they are. So I like to ask my clients: what does this concept look like on the ground? How would I draw it? Does your image of a leader look like a football coach? A symphony conductor? A social media influencer? What behaviours look like respect to you? Are they the same as what looks like respect to a teacher? An Elder? An army sergeant? What I’m saying is that words mean different things at different times to different people – and if we’re going to understand each other, we have to be clear that we’re talking about the same thing.

At the most benign level, a lack of clarity leads to confusion and makes it difficult to address issues effectively. For example, if we don’t have a shared understanding of sustainability (or innovation, or best practices, or whatever), how will we ever achieve it? Which, I think, is why things so often bog down between the idea and the implementation.

But at another level, unclarity can be downright dangerous. This shows up most glaringly in the realm of politics. In 2016 Donald Trump ran on a huge abstraction: “Make America Great Again.” A slogan that apparently meant something to a whole lot of people – but what, exactly? Who is America? What does “great” look like – and for whom? What period of “great” do we want to return to? One could imagine many different answers to these questions – and we don’t have to exercise our imaginations very strenuously to know how this abstraction has played out in real life (and not just in the US, by the way).

Or take the word “freedom,” which might be one of the murkiest words in the  current political vocabulary. What do we mean when we talk about freedom? Freedom to exercise our civil rights and fulfill our purpose unhindered? Freedom to be who we are without fear regardless of race, sexuality, gender identity, religion, and so on? To go to school or work or knock on a stranger’s door without fearing for one’s life? Or are we talking about freedom to impose our agenda on others because we have the money and the power to do so? Freedom to carry an assault weapon into the classroom or office? Freedom to push anyone “not like us” into the shadows so we don’t have to be offended by their presence? The word “freedom” is used by different people to mean all these things and more. What happens when people with different understandings of this grand abstraction clash with each other? Just look around. It isn’t pretty.

So yeah, I’m happy to appoint myself CCO and continue to push for us to go beyond abstractions when we talk. I will continue to ask questions like: What does that word/phrase/idea mean? What does it look like? How does it play out in action? Who does it serve? By continually striving to make the abstract more concrete, I will try to bring fuzzy ideas into clearer focus, thereby helping those with good intentions be more effective in their actions – and reducing the power of those with less-than-good intentions by exposing them for what they are.

Clarity. Our lives and our world depend on it. Do I make myself perfectly clear?