Minute With Mallon: What If This Isn’t Out of Your Control?
Welcome to Minute with Mallon!
Something I Taught:
Welcome to Minute with Mallon!
Something I Taught:
I was working with a client recently, and he shared a business win that most people would say was impossible.
He’s in an industry where outcomes like retention, loss ratios, and profitability are often described as “out of our control.” Especially when you’re dealing with large claims, complex variables, and outside carriers.
In their case, a major commercial building burned down—nearly a $2 million loss. Most firms would shrug and say, “That’s just the cost of doing business.”
But they didn’t.
Instead, they got ruthlessly clear about what could be influenced. They put disciplined practices in place. They set firm parameters. They executed consistently all year. And when the numbers came in, they didn’t just survive—they landed comfortably on the right side of profitability.
What struck him most wasn’t the result—it was the realization that they had far more control than they’d ever believed.
As he was talking, it reminded me of something Steve Jobs was famous for: the Reality Distortion Field.
Jobs had this unusual leadership trait. When his team told him something would take six months, he’d calmly say, “Good. Have it done in two weeks.” What made it strange wasn’t the demand—it was that, somehow, his teams repeatedly did what everyone else believed was impossible.
Not because he ignored reality—but because he refused to accept conventional limits.
He reframed challenges as tests of creativity rather than logistics. He made people believe that extraordinary effort was not only expected—but meaningful. And over time, his teams stopped asking, “Can this be done?” and started asking, “How do we make this happen?
That’s exactly what this client and his team did.
They didn’t deny the difficulty. They didn’t minimize the risk. They simply stopped outsourcing responsibility to “industry norms” and started leading as if results were influenceable.
Here’s the leadership lesson:
Growth doesn’t happen when teams accept reality as fixed.
It happens when leaders help people see where influence actually exists.
The best leaders don’t demand the impossible blindly. They help teams question assumptions, narrow focus, and execute relentlessly on what can be controlled.
That’s not distortion—it’s leadership.
And it’s often the difference between average performance and exceptional results.
So here’s the question worth sitting with:
Where have I accepted “that’s just how it works” when, in reality, better leadership could change the outcome?
Something to Ponder:
"The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light.”
James Baldwin
Something I Learned:
One of the most interesting ideas from Win Every Day by Mark Miller is this:
Extraordinary results don’t come from winning big once in a while — they come from winning the right small battles every day.
Miller points out that leaders often overestimate what they can change in a year and underestimate what they can change in a day. We look for breakthroughs, when real progress usually comes from simple daily disciplines consistently applied.
Winning every day isn’t about intensity or perfection — it’s about intentionality.
The leaders who win long-term are the ones who:
Show up prepared
Do the important things even when they aren’t urgent
Keep small promises to themselves
And stack enough ordinary days that the results look extraordinary in hindsight
The reminder for me was simple:
Success isn’t built in dramatic moments — it’s built in how you choose to lead and live today.
My takeaway from reading Win Every Day was this: Extraordinary leadership isn’t built someday — it’s built in how you choose to show up today.
So show up intentionally each and every day!!
Something I Saw:
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Hope you have an incredible week!
Robert
