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THINKING BUSINESS
a blog by Chris Barrow

The PIVOT – the moment when everything changes

There comes a moment in personal or business development when we PIVOT.

At that moment, the course changes in a fundamentally new direction.

The old rules become history.

The new rules become your bigger future.

For my clients there are numerous examples of PIVOTal decisions:

  1. to finally leave the NHS and offer an independent solution to oral healthcare;

  2. to become an owner;

  3. to focus on a special area of clinical interest;

  4. to take more holidays, come what may;

  5. to stop tolerating somebody else’s performance or behaviour;

  6. to work ON your business for one full day a week.

There’s an argument that, if you are not PIVOTing, you are tinkering.

Tinkering is a necessary way to mend a leaky ship and maximise productivity and profitability. I’m tinkering with clients on their businesses every day.

PIVOTing is a game changer.

I PIVOTed at about 16:00 on Tuesday afternoon, drawing a blue line through a list on a flip-chart and announcing to my business coach Rachel Turner “I’m not doing that any more” (remember that not to do list I mentioned last week?).

The”thin blue line” is an evocative symbol of law enforcement in Western society and has been interpreted by some as an aggressive symbol of a police state.

In my case, I just happened to be holding a blue pen, so there is no hidden totalitarian agenda, simply a visual recognition that “I’m not doing that any more” has to be taken seriously if I’m going to hit my ambitious personal and professional targets for August 2020.

If a PIVOT isn’t scary, it probably isn’t a PIVOT – so I’m a little bit scared this morning but, because we invested a further 9 hours in “so how are you going to do that then?”, my initial anxiety has been replaced by a time-activated plan that will be transferred into Asana and communicated to Team CB over the next few days.

No – I’m not telling you what my PIVOT was – you will have to wait and see.

Coach Barrow 2018 – 2020 will be radically different but the outcomes delivered to clients will remain fundamentally the same.

More profit, less time, happy people and, perhaps, your own PIVOT?

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