Quick Learn: Influence in Action
Identifying & Prioritising Your Impact
Impediments and Circle of Influence
Does it feel like you and your team could have a greater impact and improved focus? It might be time to reflect on your circles of control and influence—what’s truly within reach, and what lies outside of it.
It’s easy to feel blocked by external challenges and miss the smaller, actionable steps within our control that could make a real difference. This exercise is designed to help identify those opportunities and reveal the areas where meaningful progress can start today.
The road to tackling these larger barriers is paved with smaller, manageable impediments. By focusing on marginal gains and addressing what is within immediate control, significant improvements can still be made. These small wins can also help pave the way or build the case for overcoming larger, more complex challenges down the line.
This exercise inspired by Stephen Covey’s circle of concern and circle of influence will help identify and prioritise impediments by distinguishing between what is within your control, what you can influence, and what needs to be escalated.
Step 1: Identifying Impediments
Take a moment to list any impediments currently slowing down or blocking the flow of value in your team or organisation. These could be related to processes, tools, communication, or decision-making.
Consider using the flow mapping exercise to uncover impediments and opportunities. Mapping out the flow of value can highlight bottlenecks and areas where improvement opportunities exist.
Step 2: Mapping Your Impediments
Using the impediments ideated in the previous step, place each impediment in the corresponding circle.
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Circle of Control: What can be directly controlled by you or your team?
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Circle of Influence: What can you influence, either through collaboration, communication, or escalation?
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Outside of Influence: What is beyond your control or influence?
Step 3: Identify Actions
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Revisit each item in your Circle of Control and identify actions you can take to address them
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Revisit each item in your Circle of Influence and identify actions you can take to address them
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Consider how transparency, collaboration, or data might support your efforts.
Step 4: Prioritising Actions
Once you've mapped your impediments, review them and prioritise actions based on the following:
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High Impact, Easy to Influence/Control: These are quick wins—tackle these first.
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High Impact, Harder to Influence: Focus efforts here next—collaborate, escalate, or gather data to support changes.
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Low Impact, Outside of Control: Consider delegating or escalating these issues, but don’t invest too much energy.
Tip: Start with one concrete action that can alleviate a major impediment and create the momentum for improvement. For things outside of influence, consider how to escalate and then let them go emotionally., it is easy to get stuck focusing on things we can not do anything about.
This exercise highlights three key learnings for leaders at all levels.
First, recognise your control—there is often more within your control than initially realised, and small actions can lead to significant improvements.
Second, understand that impediments ARE the path—these obstacles aren't just in the way, but represent the journey toward optimising value and improving the flow of work.
Finally, as a leader, it is crucial to see alleviating impediments as a core responsibility. Actively addressing these challenges will not only enable progress but also set the foundation for continuous improvement and long-term success.
Further Learning resources:
If you found this article useful, you might be interested in additional Sooner Safer Happier learning resources on this topic