"PIVOT..."
Published by Kristina & Breanne,
Posted by Breanne Smedley |
It’s one of my favorite Friends episodes. The one where Ross, Chandler, and Rachel are trying to maneuver a large couch up a set of stairs only to get stuck at every corner.
Meanwhile, Ross is yelling "PIVOT!!" multiple times in an effort to actually achieve their goal of getting the couch to the top.
It’s a hilarious scene, but often one I think about in terms of Kristina and I’s business.
Because pivoting is what we’ve done a lot of over the past two years since we founded Mindfluent Leadership, our business that exists to enable and inspire female leaders.
Yesterday, Kristina and I did a deep dive into the business through the StoryAthlete Income Live event.
We started asking some tough questions.
Where are we going?How do these parts of our business align?What do we see long term?
And, yet again, found ourselves like Ross at the bottom of a stairwell yelling, "PIVOT!"
This morning, though, it all started to make sense. (Funny how that happens after a good night's sleep!)
I’m reading "The Infinite Game" by Simon Sinek. This morning, I read about the concept of an "Existential Flex."
It’s "The capacity to initiate an extreme disruption to a business model or strategic course in order to more effectively advance a Just Cause."
Leaders of organizations who allow for Existential Flexing have a clear sense of cause and can look to the future and determine if the path they are on will restrict their ability to advance their cause. If this is the case, they flex.
Pivot. Change course a bit.
This isn’t shiny object syndrome (although we may be guilty of a little of that from time to time..)And, it’s not the day to day adjustments needed to make a business run smoothly.
This is committing to our overarching purpose, and aligning our business to that, even if it means some disruption in the short term.
We know our Why: "We believe that inspired and enabled women who choose to lead will create impactful change in our world."
We know our Just Cause: "To build a generation of women who wake up every day feeling confident in their own skin and able to live the dream life they envision."
And when we look at what Mindfluent Leader could be, we look down the road 5, 10, 20 years.
To how we enable and inspire not only female leaders, but the generation of their daughters that come after them.
When we look at our business through that lens, it’s obvious what we need to do.
Combine our efforts and allow our strengths to compliment each other in our joint business.
Empowering and enabling female leaders.And their female daughters.
We don’t want to be those businesses that refuse to flex.Who have a finite mindset and only see what’s working now, with no regards to what the future could be.
Those businesses, like Kodak in the 90s when the company leaders refused to adapt to the digital revolution because they "were being profitable" with film photography, abandon their cause and eventually die.
Or, at least, don’t operate with the capacity and vision that they could.
That won’t be us.
We will continue to flex, pivot, and adjust on our course towards our cause.
Because, it’s bigger than us.
And we owe it to this generation of women, and the next, and the next, and the next…
To continue to do so.
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