How To Pivot In Turbulent Times: 10 important ways on how and when to take bold new actions.

You know that feeling when you’re at a crossroads in your business as it relates to the direction of where to go from here. You find yourself asking "now what?" or where to I take my company from here?" and neither choice can predict an absolutely ideal outcome.

Yeah, I know that feeling all too well. In fact, many small and mid-sized businesses are in a vulnerable state — leading many founders to question the validity and relevance of their business models in the new world.

As consumers switch focus, we’ve seen startups across North America (as well as the rest of the world) do the same by pivoting their businesses, while some are unsure about how to do so. For many, surviving today means adjusting our patterns for best business practices slightly — or drastically — while doing nothing can absolutely be fatal.

Although, when everything’s in a constant, dynamic shift, how can founders and business leaders be sure of the best moves to make?

So, if you need that confidence boost to reignite that momentum, here is the key takeaways from the discussion:

1) Don’t panic (Really Don't do it!):

It’s easy to fall off track during this chaotic time, (or really at any time with a perceived level of discomfort) but keeping a level head is the best approach.

I must emphasize that remaining calm and staying focused will set your business on the right track: People are very impulsive under pressure, and they can start making rash decisions and pivots that are more likely than not going to dig them deeper into trouble. If you start giving in to those negative impulses, you’ll start to confuse your investors, market, and people.

So, the key is to stay calm, focus on what you should prioritize and what’s the most impactful, and easiest thing that you can do at this time.”

2) It’s the same mission, only a different approach:

Sometimes, pivoting isn’t necessarily about changing your business’s focus; a fractional change of course correction might be all that is needed.

If there are words of wisdom to impart it’s this: Any pivot I’ve done is always worse waiting in anticipation than when it's executed.

The key is that it’s always maintained under the same umbrella, the same mission. No matter the barriers, it’s about sticking to your business’s values and not compromising the integrity of your brand, it's about what you do and how you go about changing the approach to the end goal.”

It’s about what you do and how you go about changing the approach to the end goal.

3) Ask away:

When a crisis hits, it’s time to talk to your customers, stakeholders, and your wider business network ecosystem and to do so quickly! What you find out will be invaluable for the future of your company.

There are three things that founders should ask are:

How am I going to be relevant in the future?

How do you perceive the value of my company?

How can I help add value to you now?

As you ask more and BETTER questions as it relates to your performance and execution of how you optimize your business, the easier it becomes to track and measure the feedback given by your whole community of customers, shareholders, and your larger audience.

4) Plan different scenarios:

Mapping out strategies and having an inquisitive eye can help clarify the best direction to take.

By laying out different scenarios, and if you see that in hindsight most situations seem like a good plan then you can start to identify what moves to make.” It’s all about keeping an eye on multiple factors behind each scenario — and keeping track of these via Google Alerts or through team communication channels like Slack or Telegram for example.

Be sure to ALWAYS Keep your investors and customers in the loop with these alternate plans and don't be shy about walking them through your strategies about how you and your team will implement a successful dynamic pivot as well, The more open and transparent you are about the current situation the more trust and support you will likely receive from your stakeholders.

Having direct and open communication with all stakeholders involved is critical so that collective engagement is constantly active. It shows that as a business owner and as a leader, you are on top of your priorities and responsibilities to strategically assess, plan, and execute all viable paths to profitability and impact.

5) Be crystal clear with your team and stakeholders:

While these rocky times create friction for startups and mid-large enterprises, transparency with the team will make that pivot leap a lot easier, and more successful.

“How clearly can you present the plan to your team?” As managers, leaders, and founders, it’s critically important to communicate clearly with your team to help every single person get into those different phases to get to the stage where they can actually act and make decisions quickly and with clarity.

It’s also strongly encouraging to have your team members, investors, and customers engage in an open and transparent dialogue with you about how you and your business can make incremental improvements in tweaking and refining the structural systems and processes in how your organization can be better optimized and prepared for future contingencies.

6) Alongside clarity, boost team momentum:

“It’s about ensuring that you continue to make the company not just feel like a company, but to also feel like a community where your team can fully share and express their ideas freely and that communication and alignment is in place so that you can continue to focus and execute on the grand overarching vision.”

To ensure your team remains productive during a pivot keep them engaged with each other.

Such an example demonstrated is of how as an evolving business you’ve been keeping up team social interaction.

For instance, you can build a business continuity plan and implement lots of little coffee concepts. So, you can do activities like coffee catch-ups, management catch-ups, check-ins, and regular events in a virtual environment.

As an example, on Friday nights you could do quiz nights and different competitions where they enter a raffle and there's a prize involved for a chance for your employees to win, so morale ends the week is on a high.

It’s about ensuring that you continue to make the company feel not just like a company, but to a larger extent a community and family of loyal, motivated, and committed to showing up as nothing less than their absolute best people, ensuring that the team communication and alignment is in place so that you can continue to focus and execute on the grand overarching vision.

7) DON’T’ FORGET! Pay extra attention to your existing customers too

Stick by your current clientele so that they’re still here AND loyal to you and your company post-Covid.

For instance, as a case study, a platform that matches nannies to families and has introduced virtual nannying to help with current circumstances — keeps engaging with customers online. This company stepped up in the wake of the pandemic, by keeping active engagement with an online nanny community, giving activity ideas and tips on how to be a nanny virtually. This has created a robust online community of parents, who are this virtual nanny platform's main customers.

By over-delivering on the qualitative and quantitative factors of service to your existing customers, they will stay loyal and stick by you and your company for much longer as opposed to your competitors who don’t take the initiative to provide a higher level of value.

7) DON’T’ FORGET! Pay extra attention to your existing customers too

Stick by your current clientele so that they’re still here AND loyal to you and your company post-Covid.

For instance, as a case study, a platform that matches nannies to families and has introduced virtual nannying to help with current circumstances — keeps engaging with customers online. This company stepped up in the wake of the pandemic, by keeping active engagement with an online nanny community, giving activity ideas and tips on how to be a nanny virtually. This has created a robust online community of parents, who are this virtual nanny platform's main customers.

By over-delivering on the qualitative and quantitative factors of service to your existing customers, they will stay loyal and stick by you and your company for much longer as opposed to your competitors who don’t take the initiative to provide a higher level of value.

8) Preserve, adapt, thrive:

The holy trinity of smart, strategic follow-through; by changing course is to preserve, adapt and thrive.

Preserve your company in terms of managing cash and extending your runway. Adapt your company and maintain agility wherever you can. It doesn’t have to be a 180-degree pivot, but you can curve where needed. Thrive through the chaos and uncertainty of the current ecosystem by willingly disrupting the existing structures and systems your business currently operates to create a new space for more flexible alternatives.

It could be a change in your business’s marketing or messaging. It could be how you restructure your current operations to be more efficient.

Or it also could be how you approach hiring new talent with the skills relevant and essential for a post-crisis world. From there you can begin to Reconquer by starting and accelerating your business again by making sure that in 12-18 months, you will still be relevant to the market and your customers.

9) Be careful with your pitch decks:

For investors, there are some essential do's and don’ts when pivoting while fundraising.

Every company must demonstrate that they’re adapting to Covid-19 or any future economic turbulence (I.E a recession) otherwise they’re living in a dreamland.

If you’re pitching for fundraising now, the worst-case scenario is to show a business plan you had two months ago without any provisions or contingencies included in the prospectus to prepare all the stakeholders.

We are expecting people to adapt; there’s no choice right now. Adaptation doesn’t mean changing everything in the business all at once, it could be mapping the impact on the team, on payments, and most importantly, on what we invest in. We invest in the mission, value proposition, and impact.”

10) Nail your pivot pitch:

It’s important to get the messaging to your company, team, investors, and customers right as things shift.

Communication and inclusivity are essential if you want your business to thrive in continuity. The key thing is to give everyone in your organization and team a voice and a role to actively take on to feel that they’re involved in the decision-making process and contribute value to the company.

Whatever change or reprioritization you’re making, make sure that your people are involved every step of the way, otherwise, they won’t commit to it, and more importantly, if you don’t educate them on all the three critical factors that support your business — the people, the market, and the investors — then it’s hard to get your people to understand and go along with it.

By putting these types of situations into context — “Use data-driven charts and visuals to tell the story, weighing up the company data with relevant world data.”

This paints a clear picture of what's really happening as supported by the tools and data you use, and how to put together a comprehensive plan for you and your team to execute and put into action.

As you start to get the idea in regards to making all the pieces fit together, you'll start to see that there's more of a natural progression of the new dynamics beginning to work in your favor which in turn is an ultimate win for your business and your team.