“Control your controllables.”
It sounds more akin to advice a CFO might offer as a soundbite on successful P&L management.
Of course, the CFO is right.
But they're only applying it to one dimension — the balance sheet.
What if you applied the same discipline to every input that shapes your decisions?
Every decision is a sum of information, action, and outcomes.
Within each are controllable and non-controllable elements.
Take information alone as an example.
Information is either relevant or irrelevant, known or unknown.
Arguably, when you see it as intelligence, your filter will seek tangible over meaningless. It’s like performance managing a salesperson and using yearly over monthly data.
One great month can easily cloud eleven poor ones.
As a sales manager, data — your view of it — is controllable.
When you don’t control it, you let the yearly view define your judgment. But when you do control it, you see the data at the granular level.
Now, your performance review with the salesperson digs into the trend of poor performance, not the glory of the overall number, which lets a trend become a serious problem six months later.
Controlling what you control — that gives you agency.
How often do you find yourself settling for the headline numbers, rather than the granular insight?
The agenda is full, but even then, the conversation drifts into talk of the uncontrollables.
The recent CEO change at your biggest competitor prompts wasteful speculation about what they might do.
You can’t foresee what the CEO will do, but you’ll waste time thinking about it.
Shane Parrish recently said:
“The time you spend thinking about what you don’t control comes at the expense of something you do control.”
When did you last ask yourself if you can control this?
