Marcia's Leadership Q and As: Pivots You Need to Succeed

Q. We see teams and businesses struggle and sometimes fail. Why do so many fail, and how could they turn around and succeed?

A. Whether it’s a team or a company that is starting up, there are several fundamental factors needed for success. These are significant, so as you begin, discuss with your team and assess to determine if you’ve got the foundation to move forward.

First, to begin, what is your aim? What are you trying to accomplish together? There needs to be clarity. If team members are all going in different directions, any progress and energy will fade away.

Second, to what depth have you gone to learn, discover, and understand what your customers want? Beyond that and more importantly, what do they need that you can provide? /what’s their urgency for what you can provide? It’s up to you to observe, hear, and understand their issues and deliver your solutions. Often this step is superficially understood. That means the team will fail.

Third, a market for your product or service needs to be robust enough to have sustainable success. If the market is too small, there’s no future. Or if potential customers resist your solution, and you don’t have early adopters, the work forward will be short-lived. A good solution and process may be short-lived if it can’t scale.

Fourth, while a product may be good, it may not be compelling enough that people must buy it, must tell their friends about it, and must buy it repeatedly. Therefore, the market is short-lived.

Fifth, many companies create a great product or service, but they are a one-idea wonder. Teams need to work on product development to deliver new and different products over time. Sometimes they need to innovate and pivot abruptly to survive. It even means sometimes changing industries. We saw major pivots during the pandemic to fulfil the short-term needs. One example was the auto manufacturers modifying their manufacturing lines to build ventilator for hospitals. That was innovation at work.

Successful entrepreneurs and teams must have a solid foundation for delivering satisfaction to markets that are eager to buy products that will solve problems. And there are problems that are not articulated. For example, who had thought of putting wheels on suitcases and briefcases? The initial patents began appearing in 1921, but the wheeled suitcases didn’t gain popularity until an airline pilot began using them in the early 1970s. Then the airline industry started using them as well as travelers.