Focus on what you can control

Over the years (decades by now) that I’ve worked in industry and academia, I noticed a common pattern in organizations that don’t perform well or that have great difficulty delivering on expectations: a culture has taken hold that explains phenomena in and around the organization in terms of factors that are not under the control of the organization. Instead, these factors originate outside the organization’s walls and, to a large extent, aren’t even influenceable by the organization.

The problem with this culture is that it has a fractal nature: the organization blames the outside world for its lack of ability to change and improve. Functions inside the organization blame the organization. Units blame the function. Teams blame the units and individuals blame the teams. The result is an organization that is in paralysis and can only continue to execute the processes that it has always done and that is unable to change in response to changes in the outside world. This leads to a brittle organization: it’s very rigid and doesn’t move an inch until the outside force overcomes the internal resistance and then the organization breaks in fundamental ways.

The problem is that when we focus our mental energy and intellectual capacities on the things we can’t control, we automatically put ourselves in a victim mode and view ourselves as passive entities that are subject to the whims of forces outside of us. As a consequence, we stop taking responsibility for our destiny and we throw up our hands in the air and wait for Lady Fortune to strike us with good or bad events.