Most strategies don’t fail from bad execution.
They fail from unclear thinking at the top.
I’ve watched it happen at every scale — from startups in Finland to $10 billion portfolios at Tata. The symptoms are always the same: misaligned teams, bloated roadmaps, meetings that generate heat but no light. And the root cause is always the same too.
Nobody stopped to get clear.
The Three Questions
The Clarity Stack is brutally simple. Three questions, asked in order, answered with precision:
Layer 1: What are we building?
Not the feature list. Not the roadmap. The thing. In one sentence. If you can’t say it in one sentence, you don’t understand it yet.
Layer 2: Who is it for?
Not “everyone.” Not “millennials.” A specific person with a specific problem at a specific moment. The more precisely you can name them, the better your product will be.
Layer 3: Why does it matter?
Not “because the market is large.” Not “because competitors are doing it.” Why does this matter to the person you named in Layer 2? What changes in their life?
Why Order Matters
Most teams jump to Layer 3 first. They start with the market opportunity, the TAM, the competitive landscape. Then they work backwards to build something that fits the narrative.
That’s how you end up with products that look good on slides but die in the market.
The stack works top-down. Get clear on what you’re building. Then who it’s for. Then why it matters. In that order. Every time.
The Clarity Stack in Practice
At Tata Digital, we managed luxury fashion, quick commerce, electronics retail, and marketplace businesses under one portfolio. The temptation was to build “one platform for everything.”
The Clarity Stack killed that temptation in one meeting.
What are we building? A unified commerce backend that powers distinct front-end experiences. Who is it for? The business unit leaders who need speed without rebuilding from scratch. Why does it matter? Because each business unit serves fundamentally different customers, and a one-size-fits-all front-end would serve none of them well.
Clarity didn’t give us more features. It gave us fewer — and better ones.
When to Use It
- Before starting any new initiative, product, or transformation
- When a team is stuck in circular debates
- When a strategy deck exceeds 20 slides (it shouldn’t)
- When you’re about to present to the board and need to cut through
- When AI is being adopted “because everyone else is”
The Deeper Truth
Clarity isn’t just a business tool. It’s a leadership practice.
Clarity is kindness — both to yourself and to those you lead.
When you’re clear, your team moves faster. Your stakeholders trust you more. Your customers feel understood. Confusion costs time, money, and morale. Clarity compounds.
The best leaders I’ve worked with — at Jio, at Tata, across three continents — weren’t the ones with the most data or the boldest vision. They were the ones who could stand in front of a room and say, in plain language, what we’re doing, who we’re doing it for, and why it matters.
That’s the stack. Three layers. No shortcuts.
Choose to be wise.