It's impossible to start a business and not hear the word pivot. Founders and CEOs everywhere, claiming they've made a whole new discovery and then completely change the direction of where they are going.
Of course, for the haters, sometimes this needs to happen, and sometimes it works, but it's been overglorified. The other new solution or shiny new idea is usually a distraction from actually doing the work.
The current path of doing the work feels too hard to find a way through. To build trust in. To figure out what a product looks like. To find revenue streams.
A pivot is the easy path. The solution is not the pivot. It's wishful thinking. It's believing the grass is greener on the other side. Spoiler, it is not.
The amount of times I've seen founders who are onto great things, and then I check back in on them and they've completely pivoted to something else, which is when they tend to lose me. Then, 6 months later, they are gone.
Does it mean businesses shouldn't change? Of course not. No business today looks like it did 5, 10, 15 or 20 years ago. All businesses need to change, to evolve, it's a necessary part of business. We can't stay the same. To stay the same is to die.
Yet, the world doesn't sell it like this. We are sold an ending point. The answer! The problem is solved! The riches are here! (If you only push hard enough!). The 'pivot' is pitched as a way to get to this apparent ending point.
The reality is there is no end, until you sell up, close it down or create an ending, whatever it may look like. Until then, change is constant.
We've been doing a whole ton of internal change. The tech bros might label it a pivot. I've jokingly been calling it 'the looooong sloooow pivot', but really, it's a necessary evolution. That is all. No big announcement needed. More just a continuous need to communicate what is happening.
A more realistic way to think about a pivot is to describe change as an evolution, transformation or maturity. This fits in better to systems thinking and the reliance businesses have on the systems they exist within.
It pays attention, value and respect to the people who have been on the journey, the staff, the customers and the ecosystem. It gives time and space to think about all the moving parts that require change.
You can go after bigger, different or alternative markets through this evolutionary change. You can choose to go bigger, go smaller, go different. We don't have to label it as a pivot. We can simply say, the world is changing and we're adapting to it.
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