Conquering the Chaos
A Simple Framework for Navigating Uncertainty
Have you ever watched your team get stuck debating whether to address technical debt or rush out new features? Or have you seen your product team paralysed trying to respond to a competitor's AI announcement?
The secret to cutting through the myriad of challenges might lie in how you map your problem space.
The Original Insight: Covey's Circles
Stephen Covey introduced a deceptively simple idea: draw two circles. The outer circle contains everything that worries us - market conditions, competitor moves, regulatory changes. The inner circle? Things we can actually influence. He noticed that successful people focus their energy on that inner circle, while others exhaust themselves fretting about the outer one.
It has since become common to add an additional inner circle that creates a bit more nuance.
This is how we describe the three circles when we use them with teams…
Circle of Concern (outer): External factors beyond your reach (we often call this ‘the operating system’)
Circle of Influence (middle): Areas where you can shape outcomes through relationships and persuasion
Circle of Control (inner): Decisions and actions your team owns
For Example…
Imagine your team is deciding how to respond to a competitor launching an AI-powered feature:
Circle of Concern: The competitor's release timeline, their AI capabilities, market reactions
Circle of Influence: Your relationships with AI vendors, your data strategy, prioritization discussions with stakeholders
Circle of Control: Your team's sprint planning, your current feature development, your testing approach
Sharper Focus
When you focus on the inner circles, strategic influence becomes more intentional and you find yourself building relationships specifically in the areas that can help to move the needle. Importantly, team stress often drops as people acknowledge what's truly beyond their control rather than fighting against it.
Putting It Into Practice
Next time your team feels stuck, try this…
Draw the three circles on a whiteboard / digital whiteboard (Miro, Mural, Figma, …)
Have everyone write their concerns on sticky notes
Map each note to its appropriate zone
Make sure people lean into specificity when writing their notes. Instead of ‘technical debt’, have technologists talk about specific components / services of concern. Instead of ‘market uncertainty’, have product leaders enumerate specific customer segments or use cases.
From experience, you'll likely find that about 70% of what's worrying the team sits in the ‘circle of concern’. That's normal - and knowing this can be very liberating as the team realizes it can redirect that anxiety into energy for the things they can actually change.
Making The Magic Work: A Facilitator's Guide
Drawing circles is simple - and that's part of its power. But there are some subtle moves that can make the difference between a transformative session and “just another framework exercise”.
Start with a specific challenge rather than a general one. Instead of mapping "all our team's problems," focus the exercise on something concrete like "launching the new client portal" or "improving our sprint planning process." The more specific the challenge, the more actionable the insights.
When facilitating, watch out for the "everything is the circle of concern" trap. Some teams, especially those feeling discouraged, tend to push everything into the outer circle. If you notice this happening, try asking "What small piece of this could we influence?" or "Who in our network might help us move this into our influence zone?"
The richest discussions often happen at the boundaries between circles. Is that critical stakeholder relationship really just part of the operating system, or could intentional relationship building move it into your influence zone? These boundary discussions can reveal hidden opportunities for expanding your team's impact.
Here's a counter-intuitive tip: start with the operating system. Let people have a limited and well-facilitated vent about market conditions, organizational politics, or whatever else feels overwhelming. Then gradually work inward. Teams often discover they have more control than they thought - but only after acknowledging what lies beyond their reach.
Keep the energy moving during the exercise. If people get stuck debating exactly where something belongs, place it between circles or make a copy for each relevant zone. The goal isn't perfect categorization - it's generating insights about where to focus your energy.
Watch for abstraction level mismatches. Engineers might list very specific technical issues while product managers think in broader market terms. Help the team find the right balance by asking 'How does this specific technical challenge impact our broader goals?' or 'What specific technical components would this market challenge affect?'.
Consider using color coding by time horizon - perhaps red for immediate items, yellow for medium-term, and green for longer-term considerations. This can create a useuful lens for the conversation.
This kind of exercise can be used in so many different scenarios - including agile rituals like retrospectives, sprint planning and helping teams prioritize technical challenges, for example.
We use this exercise and many other simple yet powerful tools in our Team Chartering program. The program involves a personalized selection of highly participatory workshops designed to support your team with their specific needs. The goal of each mini-workshop is to build understanding, new processes or even a specific artifact. Grab a discovery call to learn more.