Don't Pivot, Unless You Want an Anti-momentum Injection
Don’t Pivot, Unless You Want an Anti-momentum Injection.
Are you resisting the pervasive business “pivot”?
I am, but not in the way it might seem. I’m not resisting because I don’t want to change or am digging my heels in. Rather, I want to create change differently. I want a Renaissance.
For so many years of my life, when I came upon a time to change--spurred on by what successful change looked like in the tech and entrepreneurial worlds I worked in--I would set my sights on something sure to work, to increase sales and get better “results.” Choosing a new direction based on what had the best chance of working, I would usually make the safe choice.
Perhaps you can relate?
Maybe, like me, you were on zoom calls with other entrepreneurs last year (because let’s face it, the urge to “pivot” was pervasive during the pandemic) where the collective conversation sounded like, “O.K. guys, we gotta pivot. We gotta pivot. The whole landscape is changing, we gotta pivot. Pick something and do it. Do it now. Go. And while you’re at it, let’s hold each other accountable.”
I’d get off these calls and realize I was unmoved. I would frequently criticize myself for not taking action. I would say things to myself like, maybe I should be taking action, it seems like everyone else is…
But that didn’t move me either.
And the more I heard the clarion call to “pivot, pivot, pivot” the more I felt irritated and uninspired.
Then I realized why. One day it occurred to me I couldn’t respond to a panicked pivot based on fear and scarcity.
I started to think about what it really means to pivot in an un-panicked way.
As a former competitive and professional figure skater and coach, I have a long standing relationship with the word “pivot." A figure skating pivot is a move where, like the point of a compass, you put the toe pick of one blade into the ice as the other blade circles around it. Doing a pivot feels a lot like going in circles … because you are going in circles.
When these well-meaning leaders and colleagues encourage others to pivot, they’re missing the point because a skating pivot usually signals the end of momentum. It doesn’t automatically redirect you into another inspired movement, as the term that got so overplayed last year implies a pivot should.
So you see, for figure skaters, the word pivot implies a lack of forward movement. It also conjures up images of going in circles until you come to an end - not exactly an inspiring concept for a creative entrepreneur. From our perspective, it works more like an anti-momentum injection.
In fact, to further demonstrate my point, look at the photo above. The male skater is doing a backwards pivot, while his female partner is circling around him in a decidedly precarious position. Interestingly, although this common pairs’ move is a beautiful example of trust, it is also called a “death spiral.”
In these current pandemic-inspired circumstances, many entrepreneurs and solopreneurs are “pivoting” for the sake of doing something - anything - different. It can be a mindset that lacks imagination at its core, often coming from fear instead of wise reflection and a sense of renewed purpose.
How will we get to abundance from there?
Rather than pivot as a response to the ongoing change we have known over the last few years, I propose that we re-invigorate our lives, that we re-imagine our business, ourselves and our future. And maybe that’s what “the great pause” (the pandemic) gave us an opportunity to do - to reflect before starting anew. To think about what we want to move towards and into, not what we want to move away from.
Many of us realized we want to go beyond the pivot and stop running circles around ourselves.
What if we reframed the pivot and entered into a personal (and likely professional) renaissance where we pause and reflect without placing our toe pick into the ice and coming to a stop?
What if our response to uncertainty and change -- where we feel we have little control, if any -- is to look deep inside instead of panicking? We’d have the opportunity to discover and reinvigorate aspects of ourselves we didn’t know existed, or have been hidden for way too long. What if we used that self-discovery to propel ourselves forward?
What if we took a much more holistic, creative and expansive response to the stalling out that many of us have felt recently? What if it didn’t have to make sense or feel safe? What if the next changes we made depended on continuous movement, fueled by our creative impulses rather than what feels like a sure thing?
If more of us adopted this perspective, we would develop a way to experience momentum, from a kind of flow state, even as we’re creating something new. We’d have more courage in the face of the unknown.
So in the spirit of inspiring a personal and professional renaissance for us all, I invite you to join me in a commitment to becoming more of who we are at our core, bringing positivity, movement and thoughts of possibility into our day-to-day life.
While birthing new ideas, let’s create something new - even if it’s reimagining what already is - by moving gracefully into a more powerful and dynamic future.
We hold a deep creative potential for business and entrepreneurship in our New Brave World. Let’s use it wisely and with trust toward a new vision, without necessarily having to make a full stop first.
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