Pivot is not as bad as it seems.

I thought that good teams don’t pivot. I also thought it will be hard to come back to school work after 2-week long break.

We are a very good team, and we did pivot. I also came back to school, stronger, with a fresh mind and motivation. After conducting two interviews this weekend I focused my team’s attention at the big problem we have: we are not talking to the right people. The right people are also very hard to find and this is our biggest pain at the moment.

I learned that having to pivot feels scary at the beginning. There will be so much work to do. Do we need to start over with everything? After we eventually pivoted, our lives surprisingly felt easier. Our research participants magically appeared on a massive scale. The new problem we found got approved on every step we took. The world seemed to tell us that we were right this week more than ever. Shouldn’t we trust our intuition more?

Next time I will focus on what feels wrong faster to avoid pivoting too late. My gut tells me now that it’s a good time to pivot on our solution. The one that we have doesn’t solve the most important aspects of problem our target customers face. I mentioned to my team already that I can see it coming, and feedback after our presentation supported my argument, but let’s see what happens. I will strongly try to encourage my team that the right move might make our project grow faster. We won’t necessarily have to kill our baby, we will just give it a different shape.