Amid Uncertainty, Control the Controllables

“It’s the economy, and then on top of that, the election is coming. And you know how hard it is to find good people. Talent is hard to find. And customers aren’t buying how they used to. Everyone wants a deal, and buying cycles are so long now. Ever since the pandemic, things have been so uncertain. You know what I mean?”

The above conversation is a blend of about eight conversations happening in businesses. Talk to business owners and leaders—or worse, turn on the news—and those themes creep in.

Some of those things above might be true. There’s uncertainty today. There was also uncertainty in businesses one hundred years ago. Rewind all the way back to the first entrepreneur in the world who traded a product or service for some payment—the one who started it all—and there was uncertainty there as well.

Businesses have always faced challenges.

If that’s you today, feeling the pressure, you have two options: roll over, tap out, or embrace the uncertainty head-on and control the controllables. If you choose the second option, to control the controllables, here’s a quick exercise you can do alone or with your team…

Step 1: Write down all of your business challenges.

Step 2: Write down all of the things you have control over.

You’ve just defined your issue and developed some quick awareness of where you’re at and what factors you can control. Awareness is the key to solving your issues, but it is worthless if you stop there. You have to do something with this information… You need to back it up with some action. That leads us to Step 3…

Step 3: Take action on the things you can control.

When you read this, you might think we’ve oversimplified things. That may be the case, but if it’s true, then why don’t we invest the time to do this simple exercise?

We get it. Yes, you can take this concept a lot deeper. A solid business operating system with a good strategy, plan, and metrics will help you get there. A strong coach can guide you to answers you can’t see from the inside. That said, there is something to the simplicity of using the questions above as a launchpad.

“What’s our biggest challenge, and what can I control?

Then, what am I going to do about it?”

By focusing on the areas you can control, you start to take the power away from all the challenges that your industry is facing. That’s where this is the most interesting. Within any given industry, those outside circumstances are universal. If there’s a labor shortage, it affects everyone. If there are economic pressures at play, those affect you and your competitors as well.

What separates the winners from the rest is how they control their controllables. You can either spend your energy on what you can’t control OR refocus it on what you can… From what we’re seeing in our work with clients, the most successful companies are the ones who figure this out the most quickly. We can pick up on it quickly in our initial conversations. They’re either starting from a position of excuses, or leading with what they can control.

Call-to-Action

Control the controllables. Determine what they are, and then double down your efforts in those areas.