Controlling What You Can Control…a Balanced Approach to Organizational Success!

In my article titled "Are You a Leader or Manager?", published prior to this one, I discussed leadership versus management, if you have not taken time to read that leadership lesson, I encourage you to do that first by clicking here.  It will give a bit more insight and maybe give this posting a bit more context of where I am coming from.  I will also refer back to that post some, so it will give you a frame of reference as well.

Previously, I wrote about the 10% that is not going well in your organization and the 10 times longer it may take to identify, fix and change the behavior behind the 10% not going well.  Why is controlling the 10% so critical to your organizations success?  The answer lies in the fact that there is so much outside of your control that you absolutely have to control the things you can control.  If you are only controlling 90% of the 100% you can control, then you and your organization are not hitting the maximum potential of the organization.  And eventually that will be discovered and someone will be in place that will control 100% of what is controllable.  Organizational success is based on 10% of what is outside your control and 90% what you do control.  If you don’t control it someone else will.

I use to repeatedly coach my managers on absolute control over the things we could, because there was so much we could not control, that we did not need to be adding to the possibility of lessening the effectiveness of the organization. The economy, competition and change in cultural or social factors, to name a few, are all outside your organizational control and can make you less effective. With so many outside influences that can determine your organizational success, you must master the 100% of the controllable factor within your organization.

What is the key to mastering the 100% of controllable factors….again, as I mentioned in "Are You a Leader or Manger?", you absolutely have TO CHANGE BEHAVIOR within your organization to fix the 10% not hitting on all cylinders. Your organization can be doing all the right things, but it is the BEHAVIOR during those processes that provide the result. A balanced attack is needed. I always refer to the balanced approach of this as “output” and “outcome” results. Output means how busy you are and always refers to quantity, while outcome reports tell you how effective you were and always refers to quality. Some organizations focus to heavily on quantity, while other focus to heavily on quality. Of course, some of this is subjective depending on the industry your organization competes in, but as a rule of thumb, a balance approach to quantity and quality are vital to having success. Changing your BEHAVIOR in either of those two directions can have a profound effect on your organizational effectiveness.