Zone of action. Zone of influence. Zone of outcomes.
Zone of control. Zone of some control. Zone of no control.
What you can plan.
What you can observe fairly reliably.
What you think is going to happen, what you strategize and dream about.
In coaching, big part of my job is to bring clients back to the level of action. And empower them to set themselves up for more consistency, more leverage, more alignment with each step.
In the workplace, high performance comes back to the exact same principle.
You give clarity on the outcome.
And then you empower and enable the everyday actions that might lead to that outcome.
Might.
And this is where so much damage gets done.
You never beat yourself up.
You never evaluate your team.
You never judge the progress of a client for not achieving an outcome that was never fully in their control.
That’s not just unfair.
It’s deeply disempowering. (In fact, the opposite, measuring progress one CAN control, is the most motivating force out there)
Outcomes are not commands.
They’re guideposts.
A North Star.
A compass🧭
They help us choose better actions.
Measure whether we are on the right track.
Adjust strategy.
And decide where to place the next bet.
Not judge how well we did.
Yesterday, I noticed something interesting.
I went through a coaching lesson.
Then I read about product strategy.
Different domains.
Same idea came up.
Zone of action. Zone of influence. Zone of outcomes.
Zone of control. Zone of some control. Zone of no control.
It matters that we understand the difference because when we don’t, we pick the wrong battles.
And waste enormous amounts of energy trying to control things that were never ours to control.
You can’t control what mood you wake up in.
But you can put things in your calendar that reliably shape your good vibes.
You can also choose the story you tell yourself about what happens, and that alone will reliably change your emotional state.
You can’t control the number on the scale.
Or your health outcomes.
Or your sleep.
But you can control your daily habits.
You can’t control whether your company succeeds.
Or how fast.
Or to what degree.
But you can choose a strategy.
Build systems.
Design incentives.
And make the right actions more likely to happen.
The only truly dumb move?
Trying to control the uncontrollables.
Getting frustrated that life, or people, won’t obey your orders.
And wasting time and energy that could have been spent designing for better actions.
Over to you dear reader, where does most of your time, thinking, and effort go right now?
The zone of action, or the zone of uncontrollables?
