Two errors tend to run at the same time in the same owner. The first is trying to control things that can only be influenced: how people feel, what a client decides, what the market does. The second is quietly handing off responsibility for things that are entirely theirs — who they hired, what they tolerate, and whether anybody knows the numbers.
Both are expensive and they compound each other. Effort goes where it cannot work, and does not go where it would. The model sorts everything you are carrying into three rings, and then asks a second question that most versions leave out: not what can you control, but what are you responsible for?
What is the control and responsibility model?
Three concentric rings. The outer two come from Stephen Covey, in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, where he draws a circle of concern containing everything you care about and a smaller circle of influence containing the part you can actually affect. Adding an inner ring for what you genuinely control makes it more useful to an owner, because the difference between control and influence is where most management mistakes are made.
Control
Short, and entirely yours. Your next action, your standards, your diary, your prices, who you employ, what you tolerate, how you respond to bad news. Smaller than most owners assume.
Influence
Larger, and shared. How your team behaves, whether a client renews, your reputation, what a supplier will do for you when it is tight. You can move these. You cannot command them.
Concern
Everything else, and it is enormous. Interest rates, energy costs, what a competitor charges, the weather, what HMRC decides. Real, relevant, and completely outside your hands.
The awkward part is that responsibility does not stop at the edge of control. As the owner you are responsible for outcomes across both inner rings, including things you cannot command. Nobody else in the business carries that, which is precisely what you are paid for.
Why it matters to an owner
The first reason is energy. Time spent in the outer ring produces nothing but fatigue and a well-informed sense of grievance. Worse, it is contagious. An owner who narrates the economy at the Monday meeting has just given the whole team permission to explain their numbers with the news, and that permission is very hard to withdraw later.
The second is that the rings move. Consistent action inside the control ring expands the influence ring, which is Covey's point and it holds up. Do what you said, publish the numbers, keep the standard, and over a couple of years your influence over customers, staff and suppliers grows. Spend the same period complaining about things you cannot change and it shrinks, because people quietly stop treating you as the person who decides things.
The third is the responsibility half, and it is the one owners dislike. "The team is not motivated" is a statement about you. You hired them, you set the structure, you decided what gets rewarded and what gets ignored. That is not about blame. It is that only one reading of the sentence gives you anything to do on Monday.
What it looks like in practice
Suppose the largest customer, at a fifth of turnover, cuts its orders after a procurement decision made two levels above anybody you have ever met, and energy costs jump in the same quarter. Both of those sit in the outer ring, and both are genuinely bad news.
One version of the autumn goes on trade forums and in conversations about how nobody can plan in this climate. All of it true, none of it useful, and the quarter passes. The other version splits the problem properly. Concern: the energy market and that procurement decision. Influence: the relationship with the customer at the level you can actually reach, the other accounts, the productivity of the team. Control: the price list, quote turnaround, overhead, how many proactive calls get made each week and who makes them.
Eight weeks of control-ring work does not recover the lost contract. A price review across the remaining book, a named person making a set number of contact calls each week, and an honest look at overhead will usually cover a meaningful part of the hole. Same owner, same market, same bad news — the difference is entirely which ring the autumn was spent in.
How to use it
Write last month's worries into three columns
Control, influence, concern. Be strict. "Whether they take it seriously" is influence, not control, however much you would like it to be otherwise.
Count the hours
Roughly, how much of your thinking time went to the outer column? Owners who do this honestly are usually annoyed by the answer, which is the point.
Convert each concern into the nearest controllable action
Energy prices are a concern. Getting three quotes, changing the shift pattern and repricing the affected products are control. There is nearly always a control-ring version, and it is usually duller than the worry.
Audit your language for a week
Count how often you say "we can't because" against "I've decided". Your team is copying whichever one they hear more, and only one of them is a business strategy.
Take one problem you have been describing as external
Write your part in it in one paragraph, starting with what you decided, hired or tolerated that helped create it. Not for guilt. For the list of actions that falls out of it.
Box the outer ring
Give the news, the forums and the market chat a defined slot rather than a permanent background presence. You still need to know what is happening. You do not need it in your head all day.
Questions to ask yourself
- Out of ten, how much of last week's thinking time was spent on things you can actually do something about?
- What are you currently describing as bad luck or a bad market, and what is your part in it?
- Which person or outcome are you trying to control, when the honest position is that you can only influence it?
- If you accepted full responsibility for the thing that annoys you most about the business, what would you have to do this month?
- What have you tolerated for so long that it has become a standard?
"It is outside my control" is usually true and almost never the end of the sentence. You could not control the customer's decision. You were still responsible for the concentration risk that made one customer a fifth of turnover, and that was built out of control-ring decisions taken over several years.
This sits under everything in Personal Coaching, and shows up most directly in mind freedom — clarity and confidence, because the things that actually matter are under control. It works well next to Emotional Intelligence, which is the skill of noticing your own reaction before it becomes the room's, and Comfort, Stretch and Stress, because most avoided control-ring actions are avoided for being uncomfortable rather than difficult.
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Frequently asked questions
Where does this model come from?
The outer two rings are Stephen Covey's, from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, where he describes a circle of concern containing everything you care about and a smaller circle of influence containing the part you can affect. His central point is that proactive people work inside the circle of influence and it grows, while reactive people work in the circle of concern and it shrinks. The version used here adds an inner ring for what you genuinely control, because for an owner the difference between control and influence is where most management mistakes are made. Trying to command something you can only influence produces compliance rather than commitment.
What is the difference between control and influence?
Control is short and it is all yours: your next action, your standards, your diary, your prices, who you employ, what you tolerate, how you respond to bad news. Influence is larger and belongs partly to other people: how your team behaves, whether a client renews, your reputation, what suppliers will do for you. The test is whether you can make it happen unilaterally. You cannot control attitude, motivation or commitment. What you control is the conditions around them, which is who is here, what is expected, what gets measured and what happens when the standard is missed. Get the conditions right and the attitude usually follows.
Is this just telling owners to ignore the outside world?
No. You need to know what is happening in your market, your sector and the wider economy, and pretending otherwise would be its own mistake. The model is about proportion and about what you do next. Give the news, the forums and the market chat a defined slot rather than a permanent background presence, and require every concern to be converted into the nearest controllable action. Energy prices are a concern. Getting three quotes, changing the shift pattern and repricing the affected products are control. There is nearly always a control ring version of a worry, and it is usually duller than the worry itself.