Pivoting

‘Pivoting’ is a phrase that gets bandied around quite a lot. But what does it actually mean?

The last few months has been a time of unprecedented disruption to the modern world. If we thought we had it bad back in 2008 with the global financial crash, we had no idea what ‘bad’ really meant! At least with the banks going belly up, it was a single-point event. We knew what needed doing, and we could fix it, albeit that involved diverting billions of pounds into propping up the system. Covid-19 is different. Although there is a single-point solution in theory - a vaccine, the reality is nobody knows when that is coming, and even when it does, how long is it going to take to fettle a global population?

So in the meantime, we have a myriad of special measures like social distancing and lockdown. Unless that is, if you are on the Isle of Man! Here, thanks to the relatively small, dispersed population, and the use of our ‘moat’ to repel invaders we have now eliminated Covid, and are literally back to normal aside from the issue of being prisoners on our own Island. It’s a bit like Alcatraz with benefits.

I’ve been coaching a client over the last few months who has been hit harder than most with all this. Their business had to shut, like many others, and it looked very much like they were going to be one of the last to be allowed to open if things had continued as they are doing in the UK. As I’ve helped with creating the space and time for them to work through the problems, It has been important to prevent ‘drift’. Although some new ‘personal life goals’ have become apparent, the key objective was to get back open and operating again, to get the finances back to an even keel, and then look to adjust the long term plans to transition to where they wanted to be.

This has needed a very firm hand on the tiller. The actual bearing or heading that was to be steered has remained constant. Sure, there have been some relatively minor deviations needed, to steer round particular obstacles such as those imposed by health and safety requirements. But was this ‘pivoting’?

I tend to think of a weather vane. it will pivot according to circumstance, but it actually stays in the same place. Similarly, you might ‘pivot’ on your heel, and head off in a completely different direction. But where is that taking you? Is it somewhere totally new? Are you effectively starting again? Have you really exhausted all the possibilities there were in respect of your original plan? Talking to a couple of local businesses last week, it appears that there are some folk doing just that. Being away from the workplace for a couple of months has been a sort of epiphany for some employees - key ones at that, and they’ve decided to go off and do something different. in the current climate, that takes some serious cojones, and I truly do hope it works out for them

The chances are that they haven’t really worked this through.

The bottom line is that ‘pivoting’ can be a high risk tactic. You could just end up in the same place, being blown around by change which you are failing to influence. Or maybe that change has indeed blown you in another direction. Is that really an excuse to sack off all your hard work to that point and start again?.It might seem the easiest solution, but all you are actually doing is re-booting the cycle.

I can totally understand why people feel the need to ‘pivot’.. We all reach a point in our lives where the noise and pressure is simply overwhelming. The natural instinct is to flee, believing that things will be better if we just get away from the fire. It really isn’t the case in most instances, and this is why, if we think we do need to ‘pivot’, we have a VERY clear picture of exactly what that will look like. If we are indeed going off for a totally different journey, do we have a clear route map, and are we properly provisioned? If it is only to be a deviation off course for a short while, have we the means to see us through and a clear plan about where we rejoin the original path?

Take time to be very clear on what it is you are looking for. It will pay dividends in the long run.

Derek Flint Cert.Ed., MCIPR