Do you feel stuck in your career? Looking for a new direction? Take a little advice from startups, and pivot!
“YouTube started as a video dating site called Tune in Hook Up. PayPal was a way to exchange funds on Palm Pilots. What, I wondered, can actual human beings learn from the lessons of great startups?” says Bruce Kasanoff in his article, Pivot Yourself! (Career Lessons from Startups).
Here are some ideas that Kasanoff gleaned from The Startup Owner’s Manual, written by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf. They can help you pivot your career and move toward what fulfilling your goals.
Startups fail, and fail often. That’s what they do. And it’s what you can give yourself permission to do, as well.
1. Change the Routine
Startups are known for doing things out of the norm. They seek out and listen to potential customers because they have to — they need them to survive and thrive. And you should do this, too.
“If you are dissatisfied with the course of your life, you have to break out of your routine and meet an entirely different collection of people. Hanging out with your old college friends is not the path to a successful personal pivot; to find new ideas, you have to meet new people, have different conversations, and gather new facts,” says Kasanoff.
2. Help Others
Startups don’t work because they get stuck on an idea and not on the problem the idea can solve. In other words, they forget the ultimate goal is not to help themselves but to help other people. This is also often a personal career issue, as well. For both startups and individuals to succeed, both need to help others more than helping themselves.
3. Test Quickly
So you hang out with new people, you come up with a solution to a problem others have and you are off to the races, right? Not so fast. Test your new ideas first, and test them quickly before you fully commit.
“Keep your nose to the grindstone in pursuit of the wrong goals, and all you’ll end up with is a short nose. Startups need to test new ideas quickly, and so do you. Reach out to professionals on alternate career paths and get 20 minutes of their time to test your potential moves. Test as quickly as you can,” says Kasanoff.
4. Fail and Fail again
Startups fail, and fail often. That’s what they do. And it’s what you can give yourself permission to do, as well. But, you need to do it right. This is often known as “Failing Up.”
How? Know that failure is not an “if,” but a “when,” and make darn sure when it happens, that you learn something from it. When something doesn’t work out, then you just test another path and pivot. It’s all about testing quickly and continuously pivoting and refining your options.
5. Measure it
So, things are going well … or they are not going well. How will you know? By establishing a set of metrics to track the success or failure of your pivots. You set the standards, but every time you make a move, you decide what goals you need to hit. If you miss those goals, pivot again. Check out some interesting ways to track your personal goals on a daily, weekly and monthly basis here.