Are You Ready to Pivot?

No doubt all kinds of external news have reached you, from financial, to health to geo-political tendencies. Many companies can hardly survive or even go bankrupt. We have all learned from examples such as Kodak what happens if you not (pro-actively) adapt or pivot. It will become difficult, but what if external factors are in precarious, then what?

Rationale and actions are still the same. Customer behavior changes due to external factors, so what is your company and her value proposition do, to meet the changes in behavior?

With a few tools you can bring more awareness and clarity to the newly changed (external and internal) environment.

SWOT analysis

SWOT analysis enables you to become aware of changed external developments against internal strengths and weaknesses. You might already know them, but seeing them in a matrix still brings clarity and focus, especially when done with a group of people.

Confrontation matrix

Out of the SWOT analysis, generate a confrontation matrix that zooms in on the individual combinations. The aim of this is identifying the most important strategic issue(s) that an organization is facing.

Porter's Five Forces analysis

This tool helps you better understand the competition in your market(s). This dimension adds to the clarity and focus that you will generate by analyzing what is affecting your profitability and hence adjust your strategy.

In another article I wrote about doing countercyclical business, depending on the outcomes, that might well be what needs to happen. In the article I touched one model/tool that at least is good to have in mind to realize what the current state is, and potentially, the pivoting one.

Value strategy

Understanding how you serve your customers now, and how that might change is needed to cost-effectively and -efficient run your operations to meet your objectives. Pivoting on your value strategy is somewhat extreme because it fundamentally changes your business model, but more drastic measures have been taken in the past.

Especially the SMB segment is having a challenging time. If you need help in figuring out how to navigate the new external environment, contact me.