Impeccable With What You Do Control

You have no control over the economic environment in which you find yourself. The Age of Accelerating Disruption is going to do whatever it is going to do, and it is leveling industries and reshaping the economy.

You need to be impeccable by maintaining an awareness of what is going on in your economic environment, and ensuring that you have the mindset and skill sets to succeed in the new economy. That is within your control.

You have no control over the political environment where you live and work. You have microscopic amount of influence, if such a small amount can even be measured. You might have more if you are deeply engaged in the process, or if you have powerful friends.

You need to understand what changes are being made, how they will effect you and your family, how they will impact your business, and what effect political changes will bring your clients. You control your awareness and your decision to make adjustments that serve you. Nothing more, nothing less.

You have no control over the technological or scientific changes that are part of The Age of Accelerating Disruption. Artificial Intelligence and robots are here, or they will be shortly. Science is going to allow you to live much longer than you imagine.

We aren’t going back to horses and carriages. Nostalgia doesn’t serve you, neither does wishing things would go back to the way they were. The future is here, and you are part of it. What is in your control is whether or not you embrace change and go with the grain, or whether you resist it, relegating yourself to the dustbin of history.

Your clients are going to do what they want to do, need to do, or have to do. That might include changing the things that lead to the reasons they need you. It also might include selling the business to someone who doesn’t need the service you provide, moving the business to an area where you aren’t, or closing the business down altogether. None of these choices may serve your needs, and you have no control over if or when they happen.

What you can impeccably control are the actions you take to create and win new clients and new opportunities. Enough action here is always enough.

Your irrational competitors take business at a price that all but ensures that they lose money. They buy market share by making concessions you and your company can’t—or refuse to—make. It might be sketchy, even if it isn’t illegal, and you find it immoral. But you have no power to change this.

You can control the value that you create, and you can control how effective you become at differentiating that value in a way that is meaningful for your dream clients.