Many of my consulting colleagues are encountering the same problem: everything they did to attract clients no longer works. They speak, write, do all the social media, and nothing is working. They don’t have enough clients.
This condition is different from what occurred during the pandemic. At that time, they could continue what they offered but change how they offered it, a pivot. But this feels different. This time, they might need to reinvent themselves. Since I wrote the Successful Independent Consulting book, many of them are asking me what to do.
It’s the same problem with many of my organization-employed colleagues. They pivoted to at-home work during the pandemic. But now, they fear that their employers want something different. The colleagues don’t know what that “different” thing is.
I could talk about external forces, such as AI, but that’s a red herring. These wholesale changes occur at least once every 10-20 years, so it’s worthwhile to know how to observe and react to them.
But before we all change everything, let’s consider what a pivot is and how it differs from a reinvention.
Define Pivot vs. Reinvention
When we pivot, we maintain the same general goal or direction. We change how we achieve that goal. A personal pivot might be a gradual change in only one direction, such as taking a detour on a road. While you might not like it, and you might worry about any delays, you have experience. You can pivot.
When we pivot in our careers, we might change any one of these options:
- The skills we learn or use. For example, I was a developer turned tester. Then, I became a project manager. I bounced between project management, management, and program management. Then, back to coding after the birth of my younger daughter because I wanted the option of going home early to sleep. (That typical new parent problem.)
- The department if we stay in the same company, or the organization if we leave.
- The entire industry. We might work in one industry, such as banking, and then move to insurance. It’s still a regulated industry, but there’s enough different that a job change feels different.
Then there’s reinvention. That’s when we change the goal entirely.
Back in the early-mid 90s, the telecommunications field was wide open and employed tons of people. But, at some point, the industry imploded. Companies laid off thousands of people at a time. And because most of those people lived in the same area, tons of people were competing with each other for work.
The successful people took their skills and reinvented themselves. They increased or changed their skills, changed their organization, and their industry.
Questions to Support a Pivot or a Reinvention
Here are questions you might find valuable to see if you should pivot or reinvent:
- Your value: Do clients or employers want people with your skills? If so, you might need to pivot. If not, you might need to reinvent. That reinvention means acquiring new skills.
- Problems you solve: Do your clients still need to solve the same problems? If you’re employed, is your company still solving the same problems? If not, you will, at least, need to pivot. More likely, you will need to reinvent.
- Ideal clients or employers: If your industry is watching its dollars, you might need to pivot. But when the organization watches its pennies, you will need to find a new industry, regardless of whether you work for yourself or for an organization. That’s a reinvention.
It doesn’t matter how we feel about change. Pivot or reinvention—we all work our way through the Satir Change Model (the image at the top of this post.) When the world changes, we must change along with it, whether we want to or not. The ability to pivot and reinvent is a big part of we can create our adaptable lives.
The question this week is: When do we choose to pivot to something new or reinvent ourselves?
P.S. If you write or are a consultant, Successful Independent Consulting is in the 2023 Writing Bundle for just one more week. Those books will help you pivot or reinvent.