Pivoting: change gear in your career without quitting your job

Late January. The air on the Tube hangs heavy with existential crises. Those New Year’s resolutions, so full of promise a few weeks ago, already seem like naïve, hangover-induced delusions. A familiar gnawing feeling has returned in the cold light of early 2015. You know — that one where you’re trapped down a badly lit career cul-de-sac with no means of escape, banging your head against a suburban brick wall.

But wait. There are grains of hope where wisdom seldom dwells. In the nifty career adjustments made recently by players in film, fashion and politics, a new lateral-thinking strategy is emerging. Its message is as simple as a kindergarten gymnastics class: ‘To move forward, stop trying to jump from A to B. Instead, just pivot.’

This basic manoeuvre is behind the spate of surprising awards breakthroughs in the acting realm, such as Michael Keaton’s Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for Birdman. The fact that Keaton could actually act was swallowed up long ago by his behemothic role in Tim Burton’s Batman and its sequel. Everything else had been erased from our memories. Keaton would be Batman, forever. So would he ever have been cast straight from the wilderness into a biopic of Bill Clinton and go on to be nominated for an Oscar? Probably not. But what about a film about a fifty-something has-been, who once played a superhero called Birdman, making one last-ditch attempt at artistic integrity? Not such an imaginative leap. More of a shift. A pivot. Back foot firmly rooted in the past, front foot swivelling into new meta-territory. In the words of Keaton: ‘That’s what I’ve been doing for the past couple of years. Looking. Making a few manoeuvres. Some adjustments.’

One of the trailblazers of this method is Matthew McConaughey. His ‘pivot point’ was his own cocksure sexuality, so nauseatingly wheeled out at the drop of a bad romcom script. How did he catapult from such an embarrassing place to the Oscars last year? He didn’t. He pivoted: first through his stripper act in Magic Mike, on to Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club — both characters with the same conceited sensuality — and then on to True Detective.

The well-documented McConaissance has disseminated the virtues of the skilful three-point-turn rebrand. Now, everybody weary of being stuck in the same tired old groove is doing The Pivot. It’s a move the fashion world knows well — take Kate Moss with her designs for Topshop. However, the Best Pivot in Fashion award of all time is still held by Victoria Beckham, who, post Spice Girls, went from vacant mannequin to lauded designer in 2008. Back then, the mere thought was risible. But all the sheath dresses and culottes that have sashayed past since then have pushed her Posh Spice persona and disastrous solo career, quite literally, ‘Out of Your Mind’. Examine any of the model-turned-CEOs and there is usually an obvious, identifiable fulcrum. For David Gandy, who is now 34 and perhaps approaching his sell-by date, this is his recent pivot into retail — the acquisition of the East End rock’n’roll cobbler David Preston, not to mention his stake in Wheyhey, the ice cream alternative. Now Gandy is a smart businessman and torch-carrier for the heritage of British fashion, not just a guy with a six-pack on a boat in Y-fronts.

The pivot-and-rebrand concept is the inevitable consequence of logic. But the term was only officially coined in 2012 by entrepreneur Eric Ries as a business strategy for startup companies that ‘change direction but stay grounded in what they’ve learned. They keep one foot in the past and place one foot in a new possible future. Over time, this pivoting may lead far afield from their original vision, but if you look carefully, you’ll be able to detect common threads that link each iteration. By contrast, many unsuccessful startups simply jump outright from one vision to something completely different. These jumps are extremely risky, because they don’t leverage the validated learning about customers that came before.’

Some of today’s dominant social media brands began as startups that shifted course before they found their correct market positioning. Twitter was the brainchild of audio podcasting company Odeo. YouTube launched as a video dating site. Flickr’s initial concept was an online role-playing platform called Game Neverending, with a tool that allowed you to swap photos. Instagram was formerly known as Burbn and was based on local search app Foursquare with additional gaming features, before it distilled down to a social media photo-log with 300 million users. Groupon was the evolution of Thepoint.com, which organised political protests before it became a billion-dollar deal-of-the day coupon site — it is still pivoting forward, adjusting its strategy in response to consumer feedback that highlighted a world-weariness for all the speculative ‘bargain’ emails. News site BuzzFeed, renowned for its top-ten lists, which began life as an initiative to create and track viral content, is expanding into investigations having hired Heidi Blake, one of the country’s most talented journalists, who was behind the Qatar/FIFA alleged World Cup corruption story last year.

All the above have evolved according to Ries’ flexible notion of ‘startupology’, which contrasts with the traditional tunnel vision of sticking to one long-term business plan and instead favours shifting, via incremental pivots, from one to another according to new technologies and the ever-changing market. The defining factor of success is the ability to remain agile, utilise your core resources, and, above all, process learning before you move forward.

I learned to pivot at school. It was my mastery of the nimble one-footed spin that won me the captainship of the sixth-form netball team, despite the fact I stood shoulder-height to all the other players. I’ve been using that technique ever since. As a journalist, I have moved from print to making documentary films to writing fiction. I pivot between all three. My pivot point is storytelling and close human observation. My core skill is writing and interviewing. My subjects have ranged from the Mafia to Hollywood. They’re not as different as they seem. I just apply myself slightly differently. It’s about working in the space where several overlapping skill sets intersect.

This is something Boris Johnson knows only too well. His career has always spun on the twin principles of comedy and politics. In both, survival is based on the ability to disguise a treatise of the same old crap with nothing but delivery and at least a good impression of charisma. Perhaps that’s why so many comics are pivoting into politics. ‘Pub landlord’ Al Murray and Nigel Farage are now indistinguishable in attitudes, policies and daily alcohol consumption. It must be very confusing for the voters of South Thanet. And rather surreally, Eddie Izzard wants to take his stream-of-consciousness monologues to the ballot box for Labour in 2020. He could be the first male Mayor of London to be inaugurated wearing nail varnish and eyeliner.