Focus on What You Can Control (part 2)
When you’re at work, it can be really easy to get caught up in the goings on - either with drama around colleagues or external factors, and this can sometimes make it feel as though your results at work are largely out of your control. I work consistently and really hard on boosting awareness of a product that I sell that is not the primary focus of my company, and there are days that it can feel like I’m pushing a boulder up a mountain…but on those days I can remind myself of the things that I can control more directly.
Okay, sure, it can be disheartening to know that not everyone is as excited about APIs as I am (but, really, it’s their loss!) - if I show them results and higher order value, I can win them over. I can focus on crafting a better narrative. I can focus on changing the perspective of one customer that I’m working with. I can focus on building a better value statement. Or, I can focus on how the world is clearly out to get me since I’m not being handed million dollar deals on a silver platter. Sure, I wouldn’t turn down a huge deal on a silver platter - but that’s largely out of my control, and I’d be naive to have that be my golden strategy for success.
I’ll relay a story here about a colleague that’s working in a challenging territory and how simply approaching the problem differently can yield much different results.
Some background here:
This colleague, we’ll call him Stephen, works in a territory that’s had some overall challenges with results in the last couple of years. Naturally, Stephen tends to focus on “I’ll do what I can in my lane, but don’t expect that much to change” - which is, I believe, a common mindset for people to take when they’re put in a challenging situation.
My approach to a challenging scenario, be it a territory, global pandemic, or someone trying to de-prioritize what I’m doing is to throw a challenge right back out there. Every challenge is an opportunity to change. You can change yourself, or you can change the situation. I always try to change the situation first.
When Stephen and I were discussing his most recent challenges with making progress in his territory, he’d mentioned that he felt his message would go into a void given that there are much bigger problems to be solved beyond his scope of power. “How can I expect the business to listen to me when they’re drowning all around me?”
I simply said, “That might be, but this also affords you an opportunity to change the scope of your influence. You can be another passenger on the ship, or you can throw them a life raft.”
If I were coming in to lead a new team or territory, I would seek out the help of people offering life rafts over the people telling me how the water makes their socks soggy. There are a lot of soggy socks, and only so many life rafts. It’s really easy to get caught up in “soggy socking” when your colleagues are all focusing on that - but finding a way to control your narrative to differentiate yourself and your value will surely help you rise above the soggy socks.
You might be saying to yourself, “If it were only so easy. I’m in a job that doesn’t afford a lot of that kind of life rafting…”
That’s actually okay. Most people severely underestimate the value of shaping their narrative, and don’t think they have much control over it. Put another way, how you respond to these challenges will shape how much control you have over your narrative. A lot of this depends on how people perceive you - which comes back to your brand, expertise, point of view, and even willingness to show up and work really really hard.
In my book, Earning What You Deserve: The Guide for Building Long-term Success Starting From Graduation Day (Amazon), each of these topics have their own chapter and they all require a deeper dive before you can run around offering life rafts to everyone.
