CHAPTER 11

The Art of the Pivot

One of the things I’ve noticed through the years is that driven leaders are often restless leaders. It’s been true of the driven leaders I’ve known, including the one I see each morning in the mirror.

We desire change and seek it to ensure forward momentum in our business and in ourselves. We refuse to rest on our laurels and become complacent or lazy. We find that leading others through change is challenging yet incredibly rewarding if indeed the change is significant and positive. So we constantly envision the change that is needed, encourage others to accept and embrace change, and then take them there. We know the end goal is worth whatever they must go through to get there.

But leading through change is hard, even if the change is good. People usually want the outcome, but they resist the process. They want the high-tech new smartphone, but they don’t want to learn how to make it work. The outcome is great. The process is uncomfortable.

As if leading change weren’t hard enough, we make it harder by failing to communicate well or by failing to think through the impacts of change on people. Or we make it harder if we change just for the sake of change, and not with a clear purpose and goal. Plus, no matter how hard we try, we can’t control everything.

That’s why a journey mindset matters, because it helps us see change as less about what happens to us and more about how we respond to it. This is what I’ve come to define as the art of the pivot. It’s our ability as leaders to be resilient in spite of change that is difficult:

•   To draw deeply from within to fuel our spirit and keep going, no matter how stiff the headwinds

•   To understand what we can and can’t control, and focus our energy on finding new ways to succeed

•   To take detours and use intuition and instincts to make adjustments along the way

The journey becomes far more interesting and rewarding when we approach change with a journey mindset and practice the art of the pivot.

What does that look like? Well, it looks a lot like my friend Jennifer Smith.

Pivoting from Paper

Jennifer is the founder and CEO of Innovative Office Solutions, an office supply company that, as the name suggests, banks its reputation on its ability to innovate. Like every other leader in her industry, she had heard predictions for years that the world soon would become a paperless society.

“People just didn’t believe it,” she told me.

The change didn’t happen overnight, and that made it easy for some to ignore. But it eventually happened, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who doubts it now. Paper and packaging is still a $132 billion industry, but the market for office and writing paper has been steadily declining at a rate of 5 to 7 percent a year since 2004.

That trend wasn’t good news to companies in the office supply business. In fact, it was a bigger problem than you might imagine. Companies like Jennifer’s (and the big-box office supply retailers she competes against) traditionally counted on paper-related products for at least 50 percent of their revenue.

“We sell 200,000 items that you can order today and get tomorrow, but that one item affected everything we did,” Jennifer said. “If you’re not using paper, you’re not using toner, you’re not using envelopes, and you’re not using file folders, which means you’re not using a file cabinet. So everything we did was affected.”

Jennifer faced a challenge every leader experiences at least once, and often multiple times, during the course of their journey: change hits and you have to pivot.

“The indicating signs were there, and I feel we were a little more prepared than most,” she said. “A lot of companies in my industry are gone. We’ve had to reinvent ourselves along the way to stay relevant to our customers.”

Jennifer’s company not only survived but is still growing, and I believe that’s because she understands the art of the pivot. It’s in her DNA and it’s in the DNA of her company’s culture. They are nimble and responsive, so they find ways around life’s obstacles and continue toward their destination.

She had built her company around innovation and the core principle that “relationships matter,” so the right culture already was in place. Communication was strong. Transparency was in play. Trust was evident. People knew they could try things and not be afraid to fail.

They survived by staying true to their vision of making workplaces more productive and experimenting with new ways to make that happen. It led them to some unexpected places as they went from two product categories to eight.

“Our fastest-growing category is facilities—that is, toilet paper, paper towels, trash can liners,” she said. “We’ve also gotten into the break room, as well as printing, promotional items, and managed print services. We’re staying relevant by getting into e-document storage.”

Jennifer believes she and her company pivot well for a number of reasons. They stay true to their core principle of valuing relationships, they stress communication and transparency, they intentionally spend time and money on research and new ideas, and she and other leaders anticipate change.

“Leaders who want to grow their business really have to be willing to work on their business and not in it,” she said. “You have to embrace that or it’s too hard to grow, because with growth comes change.”

Bracing for the Inevitable

As Jennifer and her team learned, there are some timeless truths about change: It’s inevitable. It’s good. It’s bad. It’s messy. Sometimes it’s all of these things at the same time. This was brought home again to me just recently when I was preparing for a speaking engagement. I surveyed a select group of about 50 seasoned leaders, nearly three-quarters of whom had been in a leadership role for more than 15 years.

When I asked about the biggest change they’d been through in the past three years, more than half cited organizational changes: a company reorganization, the establishing of a new partnership or dissolving of a partnership, mergers and acquisitions, or other changes in ownership. Another 30 percent had experienced change in their roles and responsibilities. These leaders all saw the positives as well as the negatives. Change offers interesting challenges. It allows you to develop new skills. It leads to innovation and creativity. It sharpens your competitive edge. It helps you grow profitability.

As I looked at the responses more closely, I saw two distinct types of change: the kind you initiate and the kind that comes at you unexpectedly. It’s that second kind—the kind most of us like the least—that’s the hardest and requires you to pivot as a leader.

It’s tough, the leaders in the survey told me, because you don’t have time to prepare. You don’t always have the information or support you need, and that leads to confusion, distraction, and frustration. You’re less certain about the outcome. Then you come upon the boulder in the road . . . the ultimate obstacle: loss of control, which forces you to find a new way forward.

Leaders like to drive change, not be driven by change. But as the survey confirmed, we often don’t have that luxury. That’s a lesson I learned firsthand, and it’s how I personally discovered how to master the art of the pivot.

My Personal Pivot

You might think my biggest experience with change came in 2009 when our company was pushing through the recession and beginning to grow so dramatically, or late in 2012 when we sold the company, but that’s not the case. Sure, those times involved change. Lots of change. The change wasn’t always easy, and in fact, at times it was very hard. But each time we were on a path to an amazing destination that by and large I drove and controlled. For the most part, I figured out a plan for dealing with the changes we faced.

Immediately after we sold the agency, 2013 was a terrific year with Dentsu as our parent company. We were integrating into a global network, meeting and working with people from different countries, winning new clients, hiring new staff, opening new offices in Chicago and New York. I handed off the day-to-day responsibilities of running the agency to our executive vice president, Sarah Clark, whom I promoted to president. I retained my CEO title and took on an additional title as CEO of the Dentsu Public Relations Network. Then I set about tackling my new responsibilities to build it.

The top priority for this new role was to identify and acquire public relations firms to join our network. I studied dozens of agencies and met with a short list of prospects. I also went on an internal listening tour, meeting with more than 80 leaders throughout Dentsu and the company’s previously acquired agencies globally to ensure I had a good grasp of what we needed in PR capabilities for the future. By fall I was in negotiations to buy three different agencies and having serious conversations with several more. I also found myself in some new places: I was the only female leader sitting on Dentsu Network’s international operating committee, and I was traveling more often than not, including to some fascinating destinations such as Tokyo, London, Paris, and Toronto. I was in overdrive, working hard but knowing I was laying the groundwork for hitting some significant goals in the years to come. It was an exciting time, both for me as a leader and for our company. We were all growing and thriving.

The bigger challenge came a year later when Dentsu bought Aegis Group, a London-based agency that at the time had 12,000 employees operating in 80 countries. The two large companies formed a new global organization called Dentsu Aegis Network. It was a great fit. Aegis complemented Dentsu, filling in several gaps to make the overall organization far stronger. But as with any merger, it brought changes: changes in workflow, reporting structure, processes, expectations, culture, priorities, performance goals, strategies . . . change, change, change. Because of all of these unexpected changes, the plans we had made also needed to change.

Our focus was always on serving our clients, but successfully integrating with and getting to know our new organization became the next most important priority. I had to shift my acquisition work from overdrive into neutral. All my negotiations needed to stop until we could reevaluate our strategy for a very new global organization. It was an exciting time because of the greater potential, but a challenging time because of the unexpected shift.

Frankly, it was as if I had been racing across the desert with an oasis in sight only to suddenly find myself on a motorcycle I had never ridden before. Then I was on a steep mountain with switchback curves. I had mapped a course, but it no longer applied. The landmarks I expected were no longer relevant. Everything was different, except, of course, that I was still moving so fast that I hardly had time to read the signs.

I remember thinking to myself, “We’ve been through so much change already, how much more change is there going to be?” We had just been through year one with Dentsu, now we were going through another year one with Dentsu Aegis Network. I couldn’t have foreseen that we would have to go through two integrations and that much of my acquisition work in 2013 would be for naught because of the change in strategy. I’m a destination leader, and I was eager to make progress toward our goals.

The more I thought about it, the more I knew I needed to course-correct and fast. I spent a considerable amount of quiet time reflecting on all that had happened and thinking about how to move forward from here. Personally, I wanted to dig as deeply as I could to find strength from within and my way back to a journey that mattered. First, I got some much-needed perspective. I reminded myself of my personal blessings: family, friends, health, and financial security. And in the new network, we were still the flagship PR agency with a green field in front of us.

Next, I fast-forwarded in my mind to some point in the future and wondered how I would look back on this challenging phase in my life. I didn’t like what I saw: someone who was spending time and energy feeling frustrated and uncertain. I didn’t want those things to define this pivotal time. I reminded myself that I had always been a fighter, especially through the many years of building the agency in less than ideal circumstances. I reminded myself that it’s not what happens to you in life that matters; what matters is what you do about it. I reminded myself that success isn’t promised; we have to work for it and stay the course to find it, and sometimes it’s not easy to find even then. I also reminded myself that success is not the ultimate victory, it’s the “try” that counts the most.

I emerged from this time of introspection with renewed hope, courage, and commitment. I found myself again, but it was a stronger, better self, a wiser and more determined leader. I knew I needed to share my fresh perspectives with my closest leaders, and I did so by hijacking our next executive committee meeting. As the team walked into my office, I told them we’re scrapping the agenda to work through five important questions. I had a flipchart on an easel in my office and turned over the top page to reveal the list:

1.   What is our reality?

2.   What can we control and can’t we control?

3.   What do we want?

4.   How will we get there?

5.   What do each of you want?

I started by apologizing to them for being frustrated, and I made a declaration: “Despite all the change happening around us and to us, we will succeed,” I said. “I know we can do it, and I’ll do whatever it takes to help us get there.” We must have talked for more than three hours, working through all the questions and really pushing ourselves to think less about the challenges and more about the opportunities. Then I went around to each person individually and said, “I want to win. I believe we can win. And I want you here with me when we do. Are you in?” After much laughter, many tears, and renewed commitments, we were indeed all in, and never more so.

Throughout the rest of the year, we faced even more change such as some unexpected client budget cuts due to downturns in their business, but we never gave up and maintained a clear focus on success even while we tried to find our way on this new path. We ended up hitting many of our goals as an agency, and I rolled up my sleeves to develop a fresh acquisition strategy that would make the most of our new network’s enhanced value proposition.

As we rallied and rose to the challenges, it began paying even greater dividends. We established relationships with our new sister agencies—there were 20 different brands in the United States alone—and began collaborating with them to serve existing clients and win additional ones. In fact, our agency is often cited as the most effective collaborator among the U.S. agencies in the network, and much of the credit goes to our new business team and client service leaders who demonstrated a spirit of reciprocity and partnership from the get-go.

Our revenue continued to grow, and our profitability remained above the industry average. We added new capabilities and services, doubled the size of our New York office, refreshed our brand, and continued attracting top talent across the agency to help serve clients in an exceptional manner. Our tenacious leadership team is largely responsible for these achievements. They demonstrated great determination and drive to win even while we were adapting to and integrating with a new parent company. I also hit the acquisition trail with a new strategy that was focused on building a global PR brand rather than a PR network, and I began talking with many prospects about our new vision.

Today we feel more optimistic than ever about the agency’s future. We’re on a path to a different destination than I imagined when deciding to sell the agency in 2012, but we believe it offers just as many opportunities for us to succeed, and we are determined to make the most of them. Together, we learned the art of the pivot.

Leading Through Change

So how do you deal with change? Not just the change you initiate or participate in creating, but the unexpected wave of change that hits you blindside and causes you to stumble or lose your balance altogether?

I’m a big fan of John Kotter’s seminal work Leading Change. I was fortunate to hear him lecture during the executive training program I took part in at Harvard Business School, and we spent an entire day working through his eight-step process for change management.

Here’s the short version: Establish a sense of urgency. Build the guiding team. Get the vision right. Communicate for buy-in. Empower action. Create short-term wins. Don’t let up. And make it stick. This is textbook change management, and it works. But it’s hard to pull out a textbook when unexpected change comes, and it will come. So before you can check the textbook and practice great change management, you have to pivot and deal with the new as it’s happening right in front of you.

So here’s my art of the pivot checklist for managing change in real time.

Accept Reality

You can’t make change during change unless you first accept what is happening. It doesn’t help to blame others or blame yourself. None of that is a productive use of your energy. Think about what is so and then ask, “What’s next? What can we do about it now?”

Remember my friend Jennifer? She was an early adapter to the fact that the world was using fewer paper-related office products. Accepting that reality before her competitors helped her stay in front of the pack.

Break Glass, Pull Handle

There are times you need to be bold and move swiftly. You have to make a decision. You need to move with confidence, and you need to make something happen, because everybody is looking to you in that moment. It’s easy to lead when the wind is at your back, but it’s altogether different when you have to take the helm in the storm and guide the ship. Yet that’s when you are needed the most. That’s when you must break the glass, pull the handle, and say, “This is where we’re going and how we’re going to get there.”

Tell the Story

It’s up to you as the leader to help others around you understand the need for change and the plan for moving through it. This is where your communication skills really come into play. You must become an effective storyteller, providing the context for change, showing your vision for where the organization will go from here, and underscoring the sense of urgency. You must share that story over and over again, and continue communicating throughout the change as progress is made.

Don’t Turn Back

Leading during change isn’t easy, and you have to tolerate conflict and personal anxiety to get through it. This can be challenging for leaders who are very relational like I am, because change can stress relationships. You might feel you’ve let someone down or that he or she let you down. Or people don’t agree with you. Or you feel the anxiety that comes with being responsible for the livelihood of the people who work for you. It’s tough. But you can tolerate more than you think you can, and you have to push through the conflict and anxiety. As Winston Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” There isn’t any way to turn back, and it’s a waste of time and energy to second-guess your decisions. You’ll feel like you’re walking through the fire when you are in these moments of personal anxiety. So keep your eyes focused on where you want to end up, and be the one with the clear head and the calm heart who can keep things moving forward.

Expect the Unexpected

This seems so obvious, yet we seldom do it. When we’re in the middle of life, we’re focused on what’s in front of us or on the plans we’re making for the future. We’re focused on our destination and how to get there. Then the road shifts beneath our wheels. By looking through the turn, we’re anticipating change and we’re more adaptable, nimble, and responsive.

This takes focused effort. Regularly ask “What if?” questions that help you spot potential change sooner rather than later. What if our customers’ needs fundamentally change and they no longer want what we offer? What if there is a change in our company’s top leadership that directly impacts me? What if a new technology disrupts the way we do business?

When we were motorcycling in the Alps, my husband would stop at times on the road and look down the mountain to see what we might encounter over the next few miles. He wasn’t just riding into the unknown. He was learning as much as possible about that unknown and never forgetting that something unexpected might pop up around the next turn.

Keep Something in the Reserve Tank

There’s a common myth that motorcycles have a reserve gas tank, but there’s only the one tank that sits between you and the handlebars. This tank does get smaller at the bottom where there’s an intake straw, and when the fuel drops below this point, your motorcycle sputters and comes to a stop. But by turning the petcock valve, you can access the gas that’s still in the tank and travel another 20 or 30 miles. So it acts as a reserve.

I love that analogy because when we’re dealing with change, we all need access to a reserve of internal strength and determination that allows us to power through the critical moments when most others will quit. This is exactly what I was looking for during my time of reflection and regrouping. This is the time our team needs us most. But in order to have that reserve when you need it, you must build it up in advance by fortifying your emotional capacity, clarifying your sense of purpose, and strengthening your desire to succeed. You must also take care of yourself physically, not becoming so run-down or out of shape that you lose the stamina and clear-mindedness to face change.

Another effective strategy is to engage your leadership team regularly in problem-solving and build a cohesive group that is willing and able to tackle anything together. This should bolster your confidence knowing that the burden doesn’t rest just with you but with a strong team that can carry great weight together if needed. This is something I’ve always tried to do, and Jennifer has found this strategy to be very effective in her leadership experience, too.

“If you are willing as a leader to share when you are worried about something and you take it to your team, it helps diffuse that fear,” she said. “You pull your team together and you work on it. If you have the right support staff, or a leadership group you’re in, or your board, you can turn to them, too. If you aren’t harboring everything, it’s so much easier to deal with those fears. There are things that keep me up at night, but the fear part of it hasn’t been horrendous because I haven’t harbored it all.”

Let Change Change You for the Better

The greatest lesson I’ve learned—and greatest benefit—is that change changes you. You are never the same person again. You’ll have a different view on life and leadership. It will make you bitter or it can make you better.

Earning your own self-respect is what matters most of all. That means being able to look back on any challenge and know you did your best. You can’t control many of the outcomes in life, but you can control your attitude and your effort. When you are in a state of unexpected change, it’s difficult to give your best. But that’s when it really counts.

So it’s important to be a learning leader. Be coachable; you don’t have to know it all. In fact, you can’t know it all, so learn as you go.

The challenge of change is an absolute necessity of a leader’s journey. It is the refiner’s fire that forges in us stronger character, more profound wisdom, deeper empathy, and greater resiliency. That’s exactly the kind of leader I want to be after change. How about you?

Coping with Change

When I find myself struggling to cope with the challenges of change—whether it is change I’m leading or change that’s hitting me unexpectedly—I find it easy to lose focus and lose faith. When it happens these days, I immediately think of my friend Tommy Van Zandt.

Tommy built a successful career with Phillips Petroleum before starting a second career in commercial real estate. He cofounded Sage Partners in 2005 and quickly helped build it into one of the most successful and respected full-service real estate firms in Arkansas.

But in 2009, everything changed for Tommy. One of the worst ice storms in the state’s history hit that winter, causing damage all across the region. In the aftermath, Tommy climbed a ladder to clear broken trees and large limbs off his property. He accidently fell, and a severe spinal cord injury due to the impact left him paralyzed from the neck down.

Tommy spent much of the next two years in and out of hospitals, and today he still battles the challenges of fatigue, confinement to a wheelchair, and the need for specialized breathing equipment. But he has returned to work. He’s in the game and he’s making a difference. He has become a picture of resiliency and heart in the face of tragedy.

He doesn’t speak often in public, but when he does, Tommy presents a message of hope and healing for others. You would be surprised, in fact, how little he says about his accident or his condition or his struggles. He talks about building relationships, leading with integrity, and making a difference in the lives of others.

He could complain and be bitter about the change that happened to him, and who would blame him? But Tommy reminds me that no matter what happens, we need to stay in the game and keep fighting for the win. Tommy embodies this so well, not only in how he lives his life, but also with the words he shares. Tommy shared a famous quote with a group of young leaders he was speaking to recently, and it beautifully captures the essence of dealing with change:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

—THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Thank you, Tommy (and of course Teddy Roosevelt), for reminding us all who are striving to be destination leaders with a journey mindset and searching for wisdom on leading through change. This we can carry with us: no matter what you face, get in and stay in the arena. That’s where all the action is anyway. May we never be timid souls.