You Plan A Pot Of Jollof Better Than You Plan Your Projects.

Confusion is Expensive.

You will not find “lack of clarity” anywhere on a profit-and-loss sheet. That is the whole problem.

It is the most expensive thing in your organisation, and it is the one cost no accountant can show you.

If you work the way I do: events to run, budgets to defend, ten things urgent before 10 a.m, you already know, somewhere, that confusion costs money. You just can’t point to it. So let me point to it for you.

Every time a presentation had to be redone because no one was clear what the boss actually wanted, money was wasted. The hours are gone, and the second version was rarely better, just later.

Every time a banner was reprinted because the date on it was wrong, money wasted. Every time you paid a vendor twice, or catered for 200 when 350 turned up, or booked the venue before the programme was settled and then had to rearrange everything around it, money wasted.

Every “strategic reset” that was really just doing the thing again, properly, the way it should have been done the first time, that whole quarter is money wasted.

None of it ever reads unclarity on the books. It hides inside “logistics,” “contingency,” “miscellaneous.” (I really really hate seeing these things on a budget)

Add up one year of redos, reprints, repeat payments, and repeat meetings, and you are staring at a real number, a number you paid for the privilege of not sitting down for one clear hour at the start.

That is the organisation’s bill. That is the one that affects the bottom line. Now, let’s make it personal.

Think about cooking. You would never make a big Sunday meal for twelve people without first deciding the menu and writing a list.

But imagine you did it blind. No menu, no list, you just start. You go to the market for “ingredients” and come home with onions but no tomatoes. You begin the stew, then stop, because there is no maggi, so someone has to run out again. You buy pepper you already had in the fridge.

The rice is ready; the meat is not. By the time everything is finally done, the food is late, the kitchen looks like a battlefield, and you have spent more money and three more hours than one written list would ever have cost you.

That chaos, that is unclear leadership, showing up in your cooking.

Except the kitchen is your week. The extra market runs are your repeat meetings. The pepper you bought twice is the work your team redid.

The late, cold meal is the deadline you missed while looking busy.

You finish frazzled, out of pocket, and convinced you worked hard, when really you just refused to write the list.

And here is the part that should sting: you bring more planning to a pot of jollof than you bring to your own projects.

You clarify for dinner guests but not for your team, and not for yourself. So the personal bill comes due in the currency you can least afford; your evenings, your peace, and your reputation as someone people can actually work with.

The leader who will not sit still long enough to get clear is the most expensive person on the payroll. Not because of the salary, but because of everyone and everything that gets redone in their wake.

The cheapest thing you will ever do is write the list before you start cooking.

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This week: Before your next event, deck, or budget, write the “grocery list” first — the exact outcome you want, every item it actually needs, and the order they happen in.

Give it one clear hour at the start. Then count how many panicked trips to the market you never had to make.

With all the fire in my heart,

Bisola.