It is What it Is — But You Control “It”

Many years ago I worked for a division chief at the Pentagon whose division was not run very well, and her team knew it…and complained about it. A lot. Her typical response in division meetings was to shake her head, smile a little bit, and say “hey, it is what it is.”

The problem was, SHE was “it.”

When you take on a leadership position, you get the authority to do things. You also get the responsibility for doing them. Once you become a leader you lose a lot of the right to complain about things you cannot control, because now you control a lot more of them.

Your employees will come to you with problems and concerns, because that is part of your job. You need to create an environment where they can do their best work, and if something is wrong with that environment, it is your job to fix it. If the problem is within your control, you should address it. If the cause is outside your control, you should find a way to work around it or minimize its impact. If there is nothing you can do, then you should be honest about that and explain to your employees what’s wrong, rather than just ignoring their concerns.

Of course, there will be times when your employees raise concerns about things that THEY control, and you should certainly feel free to point that out to them and suggest what they should do about it. There will be other times that people voice a complaint about something that seems ridiculous. You may not spend a lot of time on these, but you should at least respond, and maybe suggest to the person that if they are not up to the challenges of your organization, there may be other places where they feel more comfortable.

What you need to avoid is acting like things are outside your control when, in fact, they are firmly within your grasp. The aforementioned division chief was taking grief for her allocation of resources, the way assignments were handed out, promoting poor performers, and overall inconsistency. Dismissing things as “that’s just the way it is” when in fact the way “it is” was the result of choices she made, simple reflected her lack of interest in doing her job.

Your employees need a leader who is engaged and who is willing to tackle responsibilities rather than avoiding them. Employees at lower levels may be able to truthfully say they cannot control things, but leaders can’t say the same. Sure, you cannot control everything; there will almost always be factors that lie beyond your ability to influence, but not as many as when you were a junior worker bee. Avoiding responsibility seems a silly thing to do for someone who’s primary job is to take responsibility.