PIVOT and BOUnCE to Profit

After formulating the playbooks to PIVOT and BOUnCE, managers are seldom endowed with complete information. This is where chance, or luck, asserts its influence on how people choose to tackle their challenges and opportunities. In preparing to act, managers are confronted with two opposing tendencies: Some (or a vast majority) would leave nothing to chance and plan for every conceivable contingency. A few equip themselves to recognise opportunities from the unexpected and adaptively act on their lucky breaks. The latter are often the lucky managers, not because they wait for a chance to come their way. They create their own luck by building the ability to seize an opportunity when it presents itself. In creating the arenas for emerging opportunities, managers could engage in three levels of PIVOT and an adaptive BOUnCE: Foundational shifts involve building resilience by repurposing resources and capabilities as the firm’s initial endowment. Transitional moves create pathways by exercising options (and closing some), where choices are reframed and tested. Transformational pivot seeks to reconfigure extant networks and relationships to shift the sources of competitive advantages to the firm.