Executing a Successful Pivot
In Life and Startups
This is the third post in a series of How to Pivot in life and in startups. Previously, I wrote about Recognizing When to Pivot (Part 1) and Fail Forward (Part 2). This is now Part 3 of How to Pivot: Executing a Successful pivot.
Photo by redcharlie on Unsplash
Once you have recognized a need for a pivot and chosen a direction, the next step is to successfully execute . That’s easier said than done. So I will let you in on the secret to pivoting well - commitment.
Commit to overcome any obstacle that life or the market throws your way. I know, so anti-climatic. So how do we stick to our commitments? A lot has been studied and written about behavior change, all at a personal level. [a]
Since organizations are difficult to study given different stages, sizes, sectors etc, we used our best judgement on how to apply these steps to successfully execute our pivots: Focus, Set and communicate goals, Track and Reward.
Here is how we were able to execute and commit to our pivot at an organizational level.
Focus
Focus is used both as a verb and a noun. Truly successful organizations and people can do both. They create a singular focus and then focus on achieving it. They focus on their singular focus.
Focus as a noun
Focus (n.) is WHAT you are focused on. Really great organizations distill their business into a mantra which further distills into a Key Performance Indicator (KPI). For example, Walgreens had the motto of “at the corner of happy and healthy.” Their goal was to make sure their stores were everywhere. Instead of focusing on “profit per store” which would have only enabled certain locations to exist, Walgreens distilled their KPI into “profit per customer visit.” This helped them focus their business and optimize the correct things. [b]
We had a problem. In 2011, Facebook announced they would start charging developers a platform fee of 30% of revenue. Given we were acquiring players via paid advertising and our games were only on Facebook, we knew right away this change would kill our business. We immediately changed our focus and even divested other initiatives to focus on becoming less dependent on the Facebook platform. This was incredibly difficult for the business to enact as games were about to launch dependent on Facebook traffic. Our marketing team knew the Facebook platform well. We loved this platform. It was unclear if we would be successful in other platforms. The edict from our executive team made our focus clear: new games would have to find other places to launch.
Successful organizations and leaders are able to do what it takes to create focus (n.) as well as focus (v.) on one thing. They are able to do the activity of focusing while also choosing a singular target to focus on. I recommend for your personal life to do the same test, focus on one thing for a period of time, and see how far you get. You will get a lot farther than you expect.
Only great focus can create great progress.
Focus as a verb
Knowing what you need to focus on is the first step. The second step is focus. To build and create anything of value takes focus and dedication. The interesting thing about focus as a verb is that it is a binary activity. If you are focusing, you are doing nothing else. Attention, like time cannot be split.
Focus is a binary activity. You are either focusing or you are not.
The first way an organization creates the discipline of focus is to reduce the number of goals you want them to focus on. The next is creating an environment and structure for a team to organize and focus. This is why there are war rooms for teams dedicated to projects.
As early as 2010 we wanted to get the organization to focus on mobile. However, we had to grow our existing game revenue, deal with platform changes and on top of that our organization was sprawling. It was very clear that bringing our games to mobile would be strategic but difficult to execute. We even had a mobile team at headquarters focused on this, but making headway was slow.
We sent our co-founder to our China office. His singular mission: build a mobile team and get our flagship original game - Kingdoms of Camelot - onto mobile. With the autonomy, time zone difference and distance, they were able to launch the mobile version of Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North within nine months. The year the game launched, 2012, it won the Top Grossing App on iOS.
Focus as a verb means action and sometimes that action is painful. This could mean saying “no” to new commitments or reducing your current commitments. Oftentimes it’s easier to say “no” to new opportunities because they’re easier to recognize, but what people don’t realize is how much time their current commitments take. Make a list of all time commitments inclusive of travel time, follow up and time you spend thinking about it. You’d be surprised how full your plate can be with your current time commitments. [c]
The other painful decision is to stop associating with friends who are not quite aligned with your current goals. Anyone who has been on a low carb diet understands this when their friends invite them to a pizza joint for dinner.
Saying no allows you to say yes to your goals and dreams.
Set Measurable Goals
Once you decide what to focus on, it is always good to set quantifiable goals. Setting WHAT to focus on is not good enough. We all have said I want to focus on losing weight. But that is not specific enough to let you know when you’ve achieved it.
There are many frameworks to not only setting great goals, but also achieving them. A popular framework is to set SMART goals. These goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant (to your focus) and Time bound.
Once we discovered our business would die if we did not find other sources of traffic, we crystallized our focus by setting a company wide goal: 51% of our traffic would come from other sources by July 3. We even had a rallying cry that went with it: Take the hill. With a goal and rallying cry the company knew exactly what needed to be done and by when. The sense of urgency was palatable.
Track
Tracking how you are doing against your goals enables course correction along the way. If you are trying to lose weight, stepping on the scale regularly can help you adjust your behavior. Studies show that tracking helps people achieve their goals by 25% [d]. This happened to me with my step count. Once I learned that the phone automatically tracked my steps, my step count increased by 33%! The tracking helps you become mindful and adjust your behavior.
You can’t achieve what you can’t measure.
The tracking effects are true at the organization level as well. If you are not tracking the KPIs, the organization cannot adjust. This means that within an organization, you need to not only communicate the goals but also the progress towards them. This helps get everyone on the same page and also encourages excitement towards the goal.
Our Take the Hill rallying cry stuck thanks to our talented artists. They created posters of one of our executives victorious after taking the hill. They put that poster everywhere. At every company meeting we talked about our progress. It was on the forefront of everyone’s minds and reinforced during weekly meetings. I think the posters started out as a joke, but having several internal communication channels and reminders of our goal were helpful in getting the whole organization to focus.
Rewards
After achieving something challenging, it’s great to take a little break and give yourself a reward. This not only helps in recovery but if the reward is defined at the onset of the goal, it can act as a great motivator. Again there are a lot of studies around motivation and reward in personal life [e]; however, at an organizational level it is a bit trickier.
Some of the issues with company rewards (and company goals) are the following:
Efficacy. Not everyone feels like they can directly impact the results of a goal. Oftentimes corporate services (HR, Legal, Finance, IT) people would ensure everything was ready for the employees so they would be best set up to impact that goal.
Imbalanced. Some people, like the ones running the game teams, felt like the entire company was on their shoulders. The pressure can cause people to really push to unhealthy limits for themselves or the organization.
There are a ton of issues with rewards that need to be worked out even on an individual level (another post on that), but it does not mean it’s not worth it to do rewards. It is critical to set a common goal as a team and celebrate as a team. Eventually if the work is not rewarding, people leave. Therefore it’s best to tie the goals to meaningful rewards. That is why our company chose a company trip as a reward. If the company hit the goal we would take everyone plus a guest to Tahoe. Not only is a trip meaningful, but the deeper bonds created more meaning and purpose for us at work. The view and who enjoyed it with you made the hard work worth it. After we took the hill this was our view from our company reward trip to Tahoe, circa 2012:
If you have the right goal, it’s worth it.
If you are in the middle of change or beginning one, make sure you set up an environment to allow you to set your focus and focus deeply, track and communicate your progress, and finally dig deep to find the reward that is meaningful for you or your organization. It all begins with focus.
Only great focus can create great progress.
This is the third post in the series of How to Pivot in Life and Startups. If you want to learn How to Pivot, read previous articles:
Part 1: Recognizing when to Pivot
Part 2: Fail Forward
Part 3: Executing a Pivot (this post)
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Notes:
[a] Here are a few great resources for creating change in your life: Atomic Habits by James Clear, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke, Influence by Robert Caldini, Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
[b] This metric should usually be a ratio to keep your business on track. It also helps to keep your company more honest. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, found that great companies focused on a singular KPI expressed that set the great companies apart from the good companies. Walgreens example summarized here: https://www.michaelwhitaker.com/2008/02/12/good-to-great-and-kpi/
[c] I co-lead a local group that is tied into a national group. Every month there is a broader meeting which I never go to, since the other co-leads usually attend. This time I volunteered to attend since I was free, and it was only 2 hours, but was it? It took 30 minutes to get there and back, add an hour. Then I needed to send notes of what happened, add 30 minutes, plus any follow up from connections made from the meeting. This simple yes to a current committed role sucked 4 hours of my time.
[d] Using pedometers to increase physical activity. Sebely Pal, Cheryl Cheng, Garry Egger, ColinBinns and Robert Donovan. BMC Public Health Journal. V.9 2009. PMC2741450
[e]Nine Things Successful People Do.Heidi Grant.Harvard Business Review