Guest Post: Do You Know Who’s In Control?

Joel D Canfield, The Commonsense Entrepreneur

***Note from Jerry: I’m looking forward to a lively debate on this one.  My friend, Joel D Canfield, wrote this post.  I’m guessing some of you will have an opinion you’d like to share with Joel.  I certainly do.  I’ll withhold mine for a couple of days to allow the debate to run its course, then chime in with a post of my own in response (just because we’re friends doesn’t mean we always see eye-to-eye).  Only one rule: play nice.  Let your voice be heard, but please do it respectfully.  Let the games begin! ***

As I sit here waiting for my computer to finally open this image for editing, I ponder my control issues.

My computer isn’t especially slow. I just demand a lot from it. Sometimes it rebels by usurping control. (Tom Berarducci says that spinning hourglass is because computers don’t have the physical facilities to make other gestures.) I sit and watch, unable to click on something else, anything else, so I can do something while I wait on my computer.

Some programmer somewhere decided that my computer and I needed protection from each other; that, at some point, I was going to ask too much, or the wrong thing, and that it’s best to decide on my behalf when I should click, and when I should sit and wait.

It’s maddening. Yes, I know that if I go do other things, the already-slow process will become slower. And if I do too much, I can bog it down to the point that it appears not to move at all.

I don’t care. It’s my choice. Well, it should be.

When you’re talking to and working with clients or prospects or suspects, do you give them control? Do they know that when and how and if this process moves forward is their choice? Are they comfortable pushing things in a new direction, asking for something that’s not on the menu, engaging you in a dialog that involves more than multiple choice or true and false responses?

Those people who give you the privilege of being in business, your clients and prospects and suspects—do you put them through maddening spinning-hourglass moments where they feel powerless, helpless to do (or get you to do) what they know, clearly and obviously, is the right thing?

My friend Trevor Gay talks about giving power away in order to keep it. Move the fulcrum closer to the work, and your lever is more effective. Move the perception of control to match the center of real control (with them, not you) and you become more effective.

Since parenting skills make great business skills, here’s an example of giving control and being more effective: our 5-year-old loves changing her clothes eleven times a day. She knows something vague about clothing belonging in drawers, but never quite got the concept that similar clothes went in similar drawers, or that the clothing should be clean when it was put in the drawers.

Last time Mommy organised the Little One’s dresser, we took a different tack. Since LO loves maps, Mommy had her draw a map of the dresser, with labels for what clothing went in which drawer. It was fun, but more importantly, it gave her control. She chose what went where. When she was done, she had a map and a process that made sense to her.

And her clean clothes are still in the right drawers, a month later. (I suspect we should add the hamper to the map . . . )

A primary business failure is succumbing to the fear that this one might get away; that if we don’t control the situation, we’ll lose the sale or contract or opportunity. Here’s the reality: you can’t lose control. You never had it.

Enlightened entrepreneurs don’t fear this realisation, they embrace it; they shine a bright light on it; they make real sure their clients and prospects and suspects know who’s really in charge.

Of course, they know already. They just need to know that you know too.