Taking Control of Your Agency: Decisions, Habits, and the Year Ahead
Every January brings a familiar wave of resolutions, targets, and promises to “finally make the change.” But beneath all the noise, one idea has been cutting through with unusual clarity: build your goals around the agency you actually have.
Not the corporate definition of “agency.”
Not the legal relationship between principals and agents.
Your personal agency: the levers you can pull, the habits you can shift, the behaviors you can control.
This isn’t about abandoning ambition. It’s about building the execution bridge that makes ambition real.
It’s a concept I’ve learned, tested, and refined over decades of leading teams and navigating uncertainty. And it’s echoed across disciplines, from entrepreneurship theory to spiritual wisdom.
The Effectuation Lens: Control the Controllable
In the world of effectuation, this idea shows up as the Pilot‑in‑the‑Plane Principle. It’s the philosophical backbone of entrepreneurial decision‑making:
It reframes uncertainty as neutral, not threatening.
It centers agency, what you can do with the means you already have.
It reduces overwhelm by narrowing focus to controllable levers.
It encourages action based on what’s in your hands, not what’s hypothetical.
You don’t predict the future.
You shape it through the decisions you control.
The Serenity Prayer, Reframed for Modern Work
The same idea appears in one of the most widely known pieces of wisdom:
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.”
In a business context, these lines translate into three operational truths:
Don’t waste cycles predicting the unpredictable.
Act on what’s within your means to change.
Use judgment to distinguish controllable levers from noise.
This isn’t anti‑planning.
It’s better planning, planning that assumes change, prepares for uncertainty, and builds resilience into the system.
It’s the same logic behind financial modeling, risk mitigation, and scenario planning:
Your job isn’t to forecast the future perfectly.
Your job is to know how you’ll respond when the unexpected arrives.
Agency‑Driven Change:
How to Build Plans That Actually Work
When you build personal or professional change plans around agency, something shifts. You stop trying to control external events and start designing habits that compound into outcomes.
There will always be factors outside your control — markets, clients, algorithms, timing, luck. If you anchor your success to those variables, frustration is inevitable.
But if you anchor your success to actions you can take, you create momentum.
Some examples of things fully within your control:
Clarifying your offer
Improving delivery systems
Setting boundaries
Hiring differently
Changing pricing
Rebuilding culture
As the saying goes:
“You can’t control the storm, but you can reinforce the ship.”
And Just as Important:
Know What Requires Clarity Before Action
Agency doesn’t mean acting blindly. It means acting with diagnostic precision.
Here are areas where clarity is essential:
Knowing when to pivot vs. persist
Knowing which fires are real vs. emotional
Knowing which metrics actually matter
Knowing which client feedback is signal vs. distortion
Wisdom is pattern recognition.
It’s your responsibility to map reality accurately.
The Bottom Line
If you try to control the uncontrollable, you will burn energy without progress.
If you build your plans around the agency you do have (and prepare for the flux you can’t avoid) your chances of success rise dramatically.
The year ahead will bring surprises.
Your power lies in how you respond to them.
If you have been following my personal ER visit trajectory throughout 2025 you know this is true.