Pivoting

Sometimes we pivot. We stop what we are doing as we are doing it and re-focus or completely drop that thing for another, maybe we pick a thing up.

When we pivot, we often need to re-integrate new information. I am a programmer & architect so I will focus this on digital, but you may find it more broadly resonates with life.

There is an awesome book by Seth Godin called "The Dip" which I thoroughly recommend everyone reads. it is more broadly about the pre-requisite to this. The decision to go head-down full-steam ahead or stop, pivot. it is about determination and strategies to ensure that you are mindful of not pushing forwards without constant evaluation of where this fits in to a broader strategy.

Know where you have come from

There is an old saying:

If you do not know where you come from, and where you have been, how can you know where you are going?

Try iterating over the following question for each pivot you would like to make.

• What have you tried?
• Why did it not work?

If you need to fundamentally change more than a little. It is highly likely you will have to revisit every single decision since the last point of change.

Know where you are going

Without a clear direction. You are as unlikely to succeed as you were before.

• What makes this strategy, technology, or approach different?
• How sure are you that this will work?
• What is the impact of this not working?
• What does success look like?

N.B. This was originally a part of a larger article I extracted here as it was nothing to do with that article. I added some more content to make it standalone.