The Courage to be Agile and Pivot

My morning routine gives me comfort. I get up at the exact same time almost every day. My coffee maker is set to turn on 15 minutes earlier, so I go downstairs, pour my coffee and fill my 1-liter water bottle. I then head to my home office and get oriented for the day’s activities. 

After about 40 minutes, my coffee cup and water bottle are empty. Then, it’s time to get ready for some exercise. That lasts for about an hour, after which comes the remainder of my tasks to prepare for the day prior to the stampede of our four soon-to-awaken children. 

And so on. 

These are comfortable routines; they are generally productive habits. 

But sometimes habits can become too comfortable. We can stick to routines for the sake of sticking to the routine—when in fact, change is necessary. 

For example, I recently had a fairly ambitious exercise regimen outlined for the week ahead. I noticed some pain after a few days, but I ignored it. I wanted to stick to the plan. 

Sticking to the plan, though, resulted in a level of pain that I couldn’t ignore, and I ended up having to take the whole next week off from exercise. 

This was all because I was stubborn and refused to recognize that the game had changed. My original assumptions were invalid, but I pressed on anyway. 

That’s why it takes courage to change, courage to pivot toward a new set of routines. It involves recognizing that some condition or something in the world around you has shifted. It then involve realizing that you must give up something comfortable and sail into uncharted waters. Goodbye, familiar routines. 

The same process happens over and over again in teams and organizations. For example, consider the startup Gild Collective.

During the past 15 months, I’ve had the privilege of watching and documenting Gild Collective grow and evolve. This has involved much more than casual observation. In fact, I’ve surveyed the team of co-founders 45—yes, 45—times during these 15 months. 

Like most startups, they’ve evolved quickly. And for a number of months, they settled into what seemed like a good set of routines. Their business focuses on making it easy for women to get together and create something beautiful—think art, accessories, and more—all while the group has great time and learns something about themselves and each other. 

This was going well, but along the way, they discovered a potentially bigger opportunity—transforming their “get togethers” into professional workshops for the purpose of women’s leadership development. 

They realized the game had changed; an opportunity presented itself. But it would require the courage to venture into the unknown, leaving behind their comfortable routines. It would require them, in startup parlance, to “pivot.”

They’ve had to forge new networks, and, above all, adapt to a new sense of who they were as leaders and who they were as a company. 

That level of agility—sensing and responding to the forces of change—is hard. It takes courage. But it’s what it takes to succeed in a changing world. And in the case of Gild Collective, I’m happy to say, it’s working. Their new approach is resonating with recent clients (like Procter & Gamble), and many others are starting to notice what they’re doing. (Because their new focus aligns with my expertise, I’ve joined Gild Collective’s advisory board—I’m thrilled to have a role in helping them.) 

So regardless of whether it’s with a startup, an established organization, or within your own daily life, I think it’s valuable to remember that quitting the old to take on the new—in other words, being agile—is courageous. We must be open to the possibility that the assumptions under which we made our original plans may have changed. Just because you planned a certain exercise regimen for the week doesn’t mean you should stick to it in the face of injury; just because your original business strategy demanded a certain focus and set of actions doesn’t mean you should stick to it if new information or opportunities emerge. 

And by having the courage to pivot, we open ourselves to opportunities; we create the freedom within which we can innovate and evolve into the next chapter of our lives. 
 
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About Ben Baran
Ben Baran, Ph.D., is probably one of the few people in the world who is equally comfortable in a university classroom, a corporate boardroom and in full body armor carrying a U.S. government-issued M4 assault rifle. Visit www.benbaran.com.

How a Startup Revolutionized its Meetings

Some parts of life are easy to dislike. World hunger and terrorism come to mind.

For many people, so do workplace meetings.

But the startup Gild Collective—comprised of three cofounders, Jessie Deye, Kelsey Pytlik, and Rachel Bauer McCreary—has realized that meetings can not only be helpful, but they can be essential for driving alignment and productivity.

Gild Collective cofounders (from left): Rachel Bauer McCreary, Jessie Deye and Kelsey Pytlik

For the past five months, I’ve been following the Gild Collective team by asking them to complete a survey every single week. That survey has included ratings by the team across the 15 capabilities within The AGILE Model®, a recognized best-practice framework for nimble leaders, teams and organizations. It has also included a series of open-ended questions designed to help the three cofounders align their goals and activities, as well as ratings of their perceived levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA).

My thought upon starting these surveys was to provide the team with a weekly snapshot that they could use to guide their discussions and help them get on the proverbial same page.

Sometimes they did that, sometimes they didn’t.

But a few weeks ago, the team asked me to meet with them in person to discuss how they could better use their weekly snapshot to revolutionize their weekly meetings. I gladly obliged.

Our conversation seemed to me to last about 15 minutes, but when I looked at my watch, I noticed we’d been talking for almost two hours. During that time, we discussed:

• Why even have meetings, what problem should they solve?
• Prior experiences and lessons learned from attempting to have meetings
• How to use weekly survey feedback to improve as a team
• A template for their weekly meetings that would keep them on track and allow them to discuss items efficiently and effectively

The team has now had the chance to use this new approach a few times, and the results are highly positive. Their meetings have energy and purpose, creating alignment of priorities and goals along with necessary collaboration. I’m looking forward to continuing to work with the Gild Collective team as they hone their teamwork and communication through these meetings.

What might this mean for the rest of us? How can you revolutionize your weekly meetings? A few tips come to mind based upon my work with Gild Collective:

1. Obtain a shared understanding of WHY you are meeting. What problem are you trying to solve and what do people need to get out of the meeting?
2. Have a mechanism in place for making sure everyone prepares. This could be some sort of shared agenda creation, but with the Gild Collective team, this is the weekly survey I have them complete. I send it to them on Friday mornings, they complete it on Friday or Saturday and I send them their team report on Sunday or Monday. Then, they have time to read through it prior to meeting on Tuesday afternoons.
3. Create a template for your meeting structure. This will help you avoid getting in conversations that go nowhere—like going down a cul-de-sac.
4. Agree to hold each other accountable and keep a regular schedule. It’s important to note that I’m NOT advocating meeting just for meeting's sake. But when you have a senior-level team in a high-VUCA environment, weekly meetings are probably the bare minimum.
5. Periodically check in with each other about your meeting structure and process. Ensure that the meeting is still working well and solicit improvement suggestions.

For startups, this kind of meeting is particularly important for a few reasons.

First, the team is moving at high speed. Startup time is not the same as big-corporation time. What Gild Collective has done in five months is probably equivalent to about five years in many companies.

Second, teams of cofounders—whether they know it or not—are setting in place norms and routines that will ripple throughout their organizations when growth occurs. It’s best to be intentional about those norms and routines so that the culture you get is the one you want.

For any team wanting to get things done, having effective meetings is critical.

I don’t think it’s that everyone actually hates meetings. I think it’s that we hate bad meetings—those ones that waste time and generate more confusion than alignment.

What do you love or hate about meetings? Leave a comment below!

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Also: The Gild Collective team is really excited about its special holiday promotions. For those of you who are crafty or know someone crafty, check out www.gildcollective.com. They’re running a Black Friday through Cyber Monday promotion, so don’t delay!

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About Ben Baran
Ben Baran, Ph.D., is probably one of the few people in the world who is equally comfortable in a university classroom, a corporate boardroom and in full body armor carrying a U.S. government-issued M4 assault rifle. Visit: www.benbaran.com.