Just Say No To Pivoting

I’ve heard so many people say there were surprised and taken off guard by our current situation. It’s interesting to me to hear that because the virus was in other countries before it was here. Did we really think it wasn’t going to affect us? 

I started talking to my clients about the modifications and changes they were going to need to make in their businesses as far back as January. Seeing this coming gave us all time to change and shift what and/or how we were doing things.

Notice…I didn’t use the P word – I didn’t say Pivot. I said shift and change. Modify and adapt ahead of change would be other ways to think of what happened.

But NOT Pivot!

Pivoting is something you do in basketball, not in business. When you pivot you keep one foot where it currently is, and you move the other one. That means you’re stuck in the same position and you can move about 3 feet or so around that same spot.

That’s not where you want to be. That’s not what you want to be doing right now. Pivoting shouldn’t be YOUR position.

Why would you limit yourself? You might be in a completely different looking business right now than you were a few months ago. As long as you’re serving people and making money does it matter to you that it looks different right now? Or that it might keep looking different than it did before?

Change is going to happen. You can count on it. Sometimes, it might feel like it’s the only think you can count on.

Part of your responsibility as a business owner, is to do as much as you can to see changes coming so you can get out in front of it. Like in basketball, when you have a play where you want to anticipate the pass, and be in position for where the pass is coming, in your business, you want to look at trends and history and what’s happening so you can be ahead of changes and in position to benefit from the change.

So, don’t think of it as pivoting, think of it as adjusting, anticipating and being in the right place at the right time because you were in front of the change.

You should be aware, though, if you do these things, people will begin to talk about how “lucky” you are. You’ll always know it isn’t luck – it’s just hard work meeting opportunity (opportunities you put there and were ready for).