The Issue is not The Issue, Control is the Issue!

Understanding the Challenge

The Issue Isn’t the Issue. Control Is.
 
In Shoe Dog, Phil Knight — the founder of Nike — tells the story of his earliest days trying to scale Blue Ribbon Sports.
He was juggling suppliers, cash flow, and a small team of loyal but overwhelmed employees.
Every week, another crisis: late shipments, customer complaints, missed deadlines.

He blamed suppliers, banks, even the market.
But one night, while reviewing letters from Japan about missed payments and slow orders, it hit him: the chaos wasn’t out there.
It was inside his own business.
He didn’t have control — not over his cash, his systems, or his people.

(We’ll come back to how he solved it.)

Let's break it down.

The issue you’re frustrated about — slow sales, inconsistent team performance, dropped balls — usually isn’t the real issue.
It’s a symptom of lost control.

Control doesn’t mean micromanaging or hovering.
It means visibility: knowing what’s happening, when, and why — without having to chase it down.

When leaders lose control, they often do one of two things:

Overreact — creating more rules, more meetings, and more tension.
Withdraw — assuming they hired the wrong people or that “this is just how small business works.”
Both responses miss the truth: you can’t fix what you can’t see.

The Build Up.

Because control is the foundation of calm, consistent leadership.

Without control, every problem feels like a fire.
With control, every problem becomes a process.

The illusion most founders live under is that “once I hire the right people, I can step back.”
But control doesn’t come from people — it comes from systems.
Systems create feedback. Feedback creates foresight. Foresight creates calm.

If you don’t build that structure, you’ll always feel like you’re one bad week away from the business running off the rails.

Let's Go!

Start by reclaiming control through visibility — not volume.

Pick one area of your business that feels chaotic: scheduling, finances, client delivery, or operations.
Then ask:

What data point would tell me, in one glance, if this is healthy or not?
Who owns it?
How often am I seeing it?
Create a simple rhythm — a dashboard, a daily number, a weekly check-in — that puts the truth in front of you before it becomes a problem.

Control isn’t built in a day. It’s built in habits that prevent surprises.

Time to bring it all in.

When Phil Knight realized his problem wasn’t suppliers or banks — it was his lack of control — he built systems that changed everything.
He brought in disciplined accountants. He demanded weekly updates. He set metrics and rhythms that gave him visibility across the business.

And that shift — from chaos to control — became the foundation of Nike’s growth.
He wrote later that once the business had “real visibility,” he could finally stop running in reaction and start running on intention.

That’s the moment every founder has to reach.
When you stop blaming the issue — and take back control of the system that created it.

That is the moment the fog lifts, and the next summit comes into sight.

Because the issue isn’t the issue, Control is the Issue.

Luckily you are already half way there to getting a handle on The Issue!