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.

Agency Isn’t About Control , It’s About Clarity

You can’t control markets, timing, algorithms, or luck. But you can control the habits, decisions, and systems that shape how you respond to uncertainty. When you build your plans around the agency you do have (and the clarity you can create) momentum becomes inevitable.

The year ahead will bring surprises. Your power lies in how you meet them.

Be sure to read this next

These pieces deepen the pattern and help you understand where agency breaks down inside organizations:

• Why Organizations Fix Symptoms Instead of Systems
  Why teams burn energy on effort instead of alignment — and how drift makes it inevitable.

• The 3 Archetypes of Leadership Drift
  The predictable ways leaders get pulled off‑course when Vision, Structure, Culture, and Execution fall out of sync.

• The Chaos Cycle: Why Agencies Stay Stuck
  How urgency, overfunctioning, and unclear systems create recurring patterns of overwhelm.

Ready to see where your business has (and lacks) agency?

If you want a structured way to understand which levers you actually control (and where drift is quietly shaping your outcomes) start here:

A 20‑question assessment that maps your leadership system across Vision, Structure, Culture, and Execution.

See how others rebuilt clarity and momentum

Real examples of leaders who shifted from reactive to intentional:

Build a business that doesn’t depend on heroics

If your agency feels limited by unclear roles, inconsistent execution, or leadership overload, here’s how we help organizations rebuild alignment:

Not sure where to start?

Tell us what’s going on. We’ll point you in the right direction.