Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

Now that the ongoing parade of negative information in a few economic sectors is continuing to bombard us, it is a good time to maybe catch our breath and take a step back.

For example, this report on the global risks that may possibly faced during the year reinforces my thoughts.

It's not that we don't need good information, but macro information in many cases is far beyond our control, and in many cases disempowering to us. It can create a sense of helplessness, which then can make us feel we have no control of the destiny of our businesses.

With the majority of business now operating on a global level, and everything interrelated in some way, every bit of information coming out will have an effect somewhere else in the world.

Unless it's directly related to us though, there's not much we can do about it, so we should concentrate on what we do have control of, rather than what we don't.

We don't have control of gas prices, whether someone goes bankrupt, if China grows too quickly or slowly, or if people go into foreclosure. Those are macro issues beyond our control. It doesn't mean we shouldn't be aware of them and have plans in place to counter the major impacts out there, but to listen to a lot of the data and attempt to respond to or counter it all would be futile.

The temptation of taking in too much macro information, more than anything else, is the tendency to move off of what makes us a good company, and focus on peripheral issues that could end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy which brings us down because we're giving our attention to the wrong things.