Pivot

by Jenny Blake

  In my own life, “unanswered prayers” have often made complete sense in hindsight, no matter how challenging at the time. Unexpected outcomes accelerate our growth. Trusting this truth requires not having all the answers up front, and maintaining a dose of faith throughout seasons of change.

  YOUR GUT HAS A BRAIN

  Have you ever had a gut instinct that rocked you to the core? When you are in a job or a relationship, and are suddenly overcome by a physical sense that it is time to make a change?

  This inner voice often starts as a quiet whisper, and can be confusing and disorienting if we do not yet know what to do with it. But if you do not listen to the whisper, get ready: it will likely deliver a very uncomfortable WHACK instead. Wake up! our gut yells. Listen to me!

  Maybe you feel your gut instincts as a pit or churning in your belly, a lump in your throat, or a heavy feeling in your chest. But what does it mean? If you go straight to problem solving with your mind, you might miss the real message.

  Our gut has a brain. Or more accurately, it is a brain, even though our gut does not have the verbal sophistication that our head-brain does. Our gut works on hunches—a hypothesis that something is not right or that there is an opportunity ahead. It is up to us to suss out what that knock on the door of our consciousness really means, and what to do about it. We must use our heart- and head-brains to interpret the meaning of the message, then figure out how to take deliberate action.

  Gut instincts can be intimidating. We may know it is time to act—to leave the job or the relationship, to move to a new city, to have a hard conversation, or to face a truth within ourselves—and yet the action itself takes tremendous courage. Often our first reaction is refusal. Noooooo. No. It can’t be that. I’m not ready for that. I can’t possibly do that. I don’t have the strength to face that head on.

  These insights challenge us because our gut is the defender of our boundaries and core identity, both critical to our health and happiness. Your gut-brain is a fascinating, often untapped intelligence resource.

  According to Grant Soosalu and Marvin Oka, authors of mBraining: Using Your Multiple Brains to Do Cool Stuff, the gut contains over 500 million neurons, equivalent in size and complexity to a cat’s brain, and is the source of 90 percent of our body’s serotonin production. The gut-brain is primal, forming in the womb before the heart- and head-brains. It deals with core identity-based motivations such as safety and protection. The majority of nervous messaging occurs from your gut to your brain, not the other way around: 90 percent of vagal nerve fibers communicate the state of our system to the head-brain, with only 10 percent providing communication in the other direction. Perhaps most surprising, the gut-brain exhibits plasticity, and can learn and form memories.

  In other words, your gut will communicate with you when big decisions are on the line if you pay attention to it, and it will sound alarms when your most primal needs are not being met. You cannot always know with 100 percent certainty what to do when your gut-brain speaks up. The process of working with it is like building a muscle; it takes time and practice. Start by examining big decisions you have made in the past, noting when and how your gut communicates with you in the present.

  When you are unsure, do a full body and brain scan about an upcoming decision or conversation: What does your head say? What does your heart say? What does your gut say? Your gut acts as the referee between what your head says you should do and what your heart most wants to do.

  PIVOT SCALES: COMFORT VERSUS RISK

  Imagine a scale with your comfort zone on one side of the balance and your willingness to take a career risk on the other. As the risk surrounding a new direction starts to outweigh the comfort of staying in place, many pivoters experience the following sequence of inner events leading up to their launch:

  Pivots often start just below the surface of your awareness, with slight dissatisfaction or a whisper in your gut about the desire to change, even if you have not expressed anything outwardly. On the Riskometer, this state falls within the comfort or stagnation zones. Soon, however, staying in place becomes increasingly uncomfortable. You realize it is time to pivot, but are not sure what, when, or how to do something about it. You have started to outgrow your comfort zone.

  At this point, you are ready to Plant: identify what you do want moving forward, and uncover clues from your existing career portfolio of strengths, interests, and experiences.

  In the second stage, you start preparing yourself for risk by Scanning—learning, talking to others, and looking for examples of people who have been successful in the areas you are aiming for. The scale is still tipped toward your comfort zone, but is slowly starting to shift.

  In the third stage, you dip your toe in the water, testing your new direction by Piloting. Fear may be heightened at this point as the option to pivot becomes increasingly real, but so will your sense of anticipation, excitement, and adventure. If you are scanning and piloting strategically, you will be in your stretch zone, not your panic zone. Pull back on pilots that send you into your panic zone and look for smaller next steps. The scale feels relatively even.

  In the fourth stage, the tipping point occurs. You know that no matter what, you are willing to launch in the new direction even if you fail. At this point, you would regret not trying more than trying and not meeting your expectations. Besides, after piloting you will have increased your chances of success. So, as the scale tips and you meet your Launch decision criteria, you close out the former option and . . . pivot!

  ______

  After reviewing the Launch timing criteria in this chapter, you will know what critical factors your final Pivot steps hinge on. All that remains is working your way toward those benchmarks, adjusting as you move along, and then going for it.

  “But, wait!” you say. “What if things don’t go as planned?” No person or book can guarantee success. What I can do is share how the most agile impacters handle launch-related rejection, failure, dips in motivation, and difficult conversations.

  CHAPTER 11: FLIP FAILURE

  What Will Move You into Action?

  Cut yourself some slack. Remember, one hundred years from now, all new people.

  —Message tacked to a tree by monks at Wat Umong, a 700-year-old temple in Thailand

  IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TALK ABOUT PIVOTING WITHOUT ADDRESSING THE FEAR OF FAILURE.

  I am an optimistic realist. As a business and career coach, I do not insult my clients by pretending their fears are not real, or that they can move past them with simple affirmations and positive thinking. I have experienced years of wading knee-deep in my own doubts. So when they tell me their fears, I reply with, “Yep. Those things might happen.” Then I follow up with, “But will that stop you? What would you need to do to feel more confident moving forward in spite of these fears?”

  These are not rhetorical questions. Ask yourself: will those worst-case scenarios stop you? If so, that is okay. It is a signal that you need to develop a game plan that allows you to sidestep paralysis. Although many of us know when it is time to leave our comfort zone, there is a blurrier line between weaving through the stretch zone without tipping into the panic zone.

  In many early conversations with clients, before their launch is a sure thing, the word failure comes up. I want to do XYZ, but I am afraid to fail. What if I am not cut out for this? To that I ask, “What is your definition of failure?” I do not mean this in a Pollyanna sense, as a loaded question requiring them to reply, “There is no such thing!” Because fear of failure is real. But what does failure actually mean to you?

  In some cases, failure is very real: losing a job or critical income source, or cashing in all remaining savings. In other cases, reflecting on this question reveals a straw man that is dismantled through further inquiry.

  How do you define failure? Does your definition of failure focus only on quantitative financial consequences (if at all) or does
it include qualitative measures, too?

  Beyond not being able to pay my bills or getting to zero financially, a sign I am long overdue to pivot my business, my qualitative failure categories are:

  Not giving something my best effort, or overcommitting to the point where I deliver sloppy work.

  Failing to act in my own best interest; steamrolling my own needs to please others, gain approval, or protect the status quo.

  Dishonesty; any situation in which I act without integrity and that conflicts with my values.

  Not trying something new based on an irrational fear, as opposed to a strong instinct that indicates something is not for me.

  According to this list, I have failed many times. I also know that I feel failure right away, in the sick feeling in my belly, and I take steps to correct it as soon as I can. If what is done is done, I vow to learn from the experience and never do it again. The visceral feeling of disappointing myself or others, or doing something I consider wrong based on my value system, is enough to make me never want to repeat it.

  When I dig deeper with people who say they are afraid to fail in terms of losing money, or having to find steady work again even if they do not love it, their true definition of failure is regret. That is certainly mine. Though declining income or a dwindling bank account would certainly point to business blind spots and growth areas, these quantitative measures are not how I define myself. For me, the biggest failure is not trying.

  Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, shares similar sentiments, and applies what he calls a regret minimization framework to big decisions:

  I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, “OK, I’m looking back on my life. I want to minimize the number of regrets I have.” And I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed, I wouldn’t regret that. But I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day.

  Determine your own values around risk and failure, and what failures are acceptable or not. As one of my mentors once asked me, “One year from now, how would you feel if nothing had changed?” What would you regret more: trying and failing, or not trying at all?

  Failure is not:

  Uncertainty.

  Trying something new.

  Trying something that doesn’t work.

  Doing something imperfectly.

  Making the “wrong” decision.

  Getting rejected.

  These are the experiences that make you human, and an adventurous one at that. How can something be a failure if it is a critical building block of your growth?

  REJECTION AS A STEPPING-STONE TO SUCCESS

  Recall Shawn Henry, the former FBI assistant director we met in the Scan stage. One of the key turning points of Shawn’s career came from four consecutive “failures” trying to move up to the next level within the FBI. He was looking for a field desk role and applied for four different supervisor roles across Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. Despite the fact that he was the most qualified candidate, Shawn was turned away each time, and grew increasingly dejected.

  Then a job opened up as chief of the computer investigations unit at FBI headquarters. Shawn was not a programmer, but in 1999 he had the foresight to realize that the advent of computer crime was upon us. He got curious: what if we took the techniques that we used in the physical world, such as wiretaps and undercover work, and applied those tactics to online crime? He pitched his ideas to the hiring manager and finally, still weary from the rejections of the last two years, got the job. Shawn pivoted and applied for a role off the typical career ladder, and became the new chief of the computer investigations unit at FBI headquarters.

  After fourteen months in that job, Shawn moved up to supervisor of a cybersecurity squad. After seven years, he was promoted to executive director of the Cyber Division. He became widely known as the FBI’s “cyber guy,” and represented the U.S. government in international cybersecurity forums. Everything sprang from those four rejections. “All because I didn’t get a job and was devastated every time I didn’t get that job,” Shawn says.

  Shawn has since retired from the FBI, pivoting to become the president of a cybersecurity start-up called CrowdStrike. This is a role he did not see coming either, given that most of his predecessors left the FBI to work for Fortune 10 companies, but it is one that meets his values of impact, excitement, and smart risk.

  On handling rejection as a catalyst for career opportunity, Shawn says, “It is about keeping doors open, constantly persevering, and having confidence and faith in yourself. Just because these circumstances didn’t work out it is not a judgment on you as a person; there are other opportunities around the corner.”

  MINE FAILURE FOR STRENGTHS

  Businesses can fail and go bankrupt. There is the remote possibility that you could do something that leads to your death. But barring that, you have the ability to try again, wiser the next time.

  Particularly in business, I see most failures as feedback on my skills or what the market wants. If I launch a course that I know will benefit people but that does not sell, I may need to brush up on my copywriting skills. Or it might mean that I did not create the right course for my specific audience, at the right price, and for what they need at this point in their lives. Business is a great platform for learning because it is not personal. I am not a failure as a person, I simply did not hit the mark with my strategy and execution.

  If you experience failure fallout, mine the wreckage for underlying strengths and key lessons. Transform failure by returning to the Plant and Scan stages as you evaluate experiences that did not unfold as planned. Perhaps you ran pilots that were not well anchored to your strengths, vision, and work history. When you mine the learning, the experience stops being a failure and becomes the seeds of something new, a strength-in-waiting.

  Dave Ursillo had this experience after he published Lead Without Followers, a book on personal leadership that did not catch fire as he had hoped. He had recently moved to New York City, and was starting to worry as his finances dwindled.

  “I was living in the East Village watching my bank account dry up fast as my modest business as a self-employed entrepreneur and evangelist of personal leadership refused to pick up the momentum I needed,” he said. “My first book, published the year before, was a bust in helping me establish myself as a voice of personal leadership. I was slowly realizing that the vision I had been working toward, and quit my job in politics for, was falling flat with people.”

  Together, Dave and I examined his book launch “failure” as an opportunity to return to his career portfolio—to what was working—even if it was only a small percentage of how he was currently spending his time. When we revisited his book launch, we discovered that what Dave really loved and was best at was writing itself, not writing about the meaning of personal leadership, a concept that didn’t resonate with his audience. Dave knew many readers and clients who wanted to write their own books but were hitting roadblocks. He had been neglecting his “writerly side” and longed to create an environment where he could build support for it, and encourage others along the way.

  We came up with a plan that would optimize for enjoyment and consistent revenue. Dave could pilot a community for writers, billing monthly or quarterly for membership, enabling him to better predict his income. He scanned by putting feelers out and listening on social media. Dave asked ideal customers, readers already connected to his work in some way, what they were struggling with as writers and creatives, without any mention of his writers’ group. Next, he piloted by setting up an online forum called the Literati Writers, with regular calls and critiques. We brainstormed a $20 monthly price tag. The recurring subscription could mean $400 a month if even twenty people j
oined, which would help Dave make a dent in his Manhattan living expenses.

  This new idea quickly caught fire. Dave settled on a rate of $50 per quarter. This evolved into $225 per quarter over the following two years, as the group grew into “a premier offering for those who wanted a deep, meaningful and personal relationship to their writing.”

  Dave turned his book failure into a triumph by filtering its lessons for hidden strengths and interests that he was not fully applying in his business, then turning those strengths into a vehicle to help others. True to impacter form, though money was a factor, it was not the primary driver.

  “Money was putting a lot of stress on me, but even more so, I knew I was also failing to honor my own calling of writing,” Dave said. “This pivot provided me with financial promise but also an instinct about my purpose that would serve me more deeply than pure dollars. I fell in love with my mission again.”

  YOU CAN’T MAKE EVERYBODY HAPPY—SO STOP TRYING AND START LIVING

  You can either go emotionally broke running around trying to please everyone, or you can spend your time creating, being authentic to your own needs and desires, then serving others from that full place.

  One Pivot pitfall, particularly approaching a big launch, is obsessing over making everyone else happy, including partners, family members, managers, or even hypothetical “others.” Although some amount of this is critical for weighing a decision and not burning bridges, too much focus on pleasing others clouds Launch decisions and timing.

  Although I have made much progress over the years, I continue to learn the following lessons as I juggle my impacter desire to be helpful with my tendency to give too much: