TL; DR

Most innovators misunderstand pivots.

You don’t pivot your actions (e.g., your offering, ideal customer profile (ICP), etc). Instead, you actually pivot your understanding of the world (assumptions, insights).

Yes, actions change too as a result. But that’s just the by-product. And that makes all the difference.

What are "pivots" in innovation work?

In innovation work, we don't know up-front what product or business will succeed. That's why we "test, learn, and iterate" (aka "build, test, and learn") rather than just declaring a "right" answer (well, at least if we want to succeed). Or, in the words of one of the godfathers of modern innovation work, Steve Blank, we "have to get out of the building."

We just don't know until we learn. That means we'll be wrong and have to change course. And to give it a technical term, innovators typically call those course changes "pivots." The idea has expanded to cover different types of pivots, product vs. business model, zoom-in vs. zoom-out, and more.

But in the end, they all amount to the same thing. In my words:

Pivots are planful changes to a venture's direction, based on what the team has newly learned.

Except that's wrong, or at least only half-right.

What pivots need to be instead

In reality, pivots are not really about the product, the business model, or any other part of your venture. That's just the implication of your pivot.

In reality, you pivot your understanding of the world – especially your assumptions of what is true, the risks associated with those assumptions.

Actions only change as a result of that change in understanding.

In theory, many innovators acknowledge this reality. But in practice, it gets lost. In practice, it's more about a major problem that "needs fixing right now."

It may sound like a small difference. But it matters. When we treat pivots as changes in action (not in understanding), we:

  • miss other actions that should also change based on changed understanding.
  • learn nothing about the reasons for having made wrong assumptions in the first place and are doomed to repeat similar problems.
  • create a feeling that we are not in charge of our own fate, which is fatal to innovators, both to team members who may become discouraged and to stakeholders who may lose faith in you.

This is what Prof. Jax Kirtley at Wharton found too in her research on pivots in startups. What matters is the change in belief. Everything else follows:

"[O]ne of the first things that I would say this study found: As an entrepreneur, you have beliefs about the things you don’t know for sure — the uncertainties. If your beliefs don’t change, you don’t change your strategy. You stay on course. But every once in a while, in this case, only in about 21 instances, they did change. They did change their beliefs about what to do, about what was going on, about what was uncertain. Their beliefs did get affected."

– Prof. Jacqueline "Jax" Kirtley

How to use this

When you see a need to pivot, treat that symptom in front of you as a mere metric, a canary in the coal mine.

Next, step back from the symptom and ask:

1. What did we assume to be true about the world that caused us to act the way we did until now, but that turns out to be wrong?

2. Why did we have this wrong to begin with?

3. What else must change because of our updated understanding?

4. Does this teach us anything about other assumptions or blind spots, e.g., flawed ways of deciding?

5. Did we know that we had an assumption that might be wrong (e.g., by listing it among our top assumptions), and were we actively looking to pressure-test it? Or did the pivot surprise us because we weren’t even aware of it or of its importance?

You might be surprised that it doesn't take that long to answer these questions. An hour of thoughtful time may be plenty. Even a startup can afford that.

It'll be worth your while and help you to propel your venture forward even more than you thought you might take it.

T.I.S.C.

Further reading:

Kirtley, Jacqueline. "When and How Entrepreneurs Pivot." Knowledge at Wharton (Jun. 11, 2019)

Zwilling, Martin. "Top 10 Ways Entrepreneurs Pivot a Lean Startup." Forbes (Jul. 30, 2012)