If you want to make change in this chaotic era, you’ll need to pivot. Agility is the only way to stay ahead of the risks and opportunities for impact. When I hire now, I look for people who are ready to meet the moment, who are creative, passionate, and as eager to learn as they are eager to create change. But mostly, I’m looking for those people who are eager to do what it takes to face the challenges of this century, which are not only complex but fluid, requiring agility in individuals and institutions alike.
Sometimes the moment is so dramatic and so significant that to fully meet it, you have to make a hard pivot, upend your status quo, and go all in on a big bet.
Crisis often require pivots.
To pivot, you must:
- Make a choice and then identify the most consequential thing you can do. You have to want to get into the fray and the arena where important change is made.
- Gather the best minds. These conversations will naturally stir competition, and even confrontation, which can be a good thing. Rough consensus is better than none at all.
- Building an alliance from scratch requires candor. It’s easy to convince longtime friends; you need to be able to quickly build the trust that comes only with candor.
- Put the processes for taking risks in place before they’re needed. You need to be ready to put some skin in the game when necessary.
- Outwork groupthink. You must be willing to question assumptions, especially of those close to you.
From the book:
Responding to the Covid-19 pandemic required The Rockefeller Foundation to pivot every one of its core programs to address the crisis at hand. To establish a market for testing in the United States, we had to revitalize our team, reinforce our expertise, repurpose our network, and rethink our capacity for risk. Sometimes the moment is so dramatic and so significant that to fully meet it, you must make a hard pivot, upend your status quo, and go all in on a big bet.