When Things Go Sideways in Your Business, Take a Cue From Mahatma Gandhi

If there is one thing we can be assured of in business–and life–it is that things might change. No. Stop. Strike that. It is that things will change. 

One day, a potential big client shows up–hooray! Then, if you play your cards right, that potential becomes an existing client for a few years. Even better. But then, for whatever reason, for reasons good and bad alike, that once-promising new client turns into a sad-to-see-you-go old client. Alas.

The point is, as you well know, change happens.

So, OK, we agree then; change is headed your way. That is not the question. The question is, how will you deal with it? Fortunately, writers, thinkers, and business people far smarter than I have given this topic a lot of thought. 

One of them was Mahatma Gandhi, the great non-violent leader of India’s independence movement. If anyone ever had to figure out how to deal with change, it was Gandhi. India was one of the last great colonies in the British Empire and Gandhi resolved not only to rid his country of its colonizer, but to do so non-violently. That would require ingenuity, fluidity, and vision.

From marches to the sea, mass sit-ins, personal fasts, and more, Gandhi continuously pivoted his strategies to account for ever-changing realities. He did so he said, based upon this belief:

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.

Whether we like it or not, the world is going to keep changing. Your job as an entrepreneur is not to change that fact but to adapt to it. As Gandhi suggested, the best way, indeed the only way, to deal with change is not by fighting it, not by resisting it, but rather, by remaking yourself and your business. 

In the parlance of business, that means pivoting.

The word “pivot” in a business sense first originated in the great Eric Ries’s book, The Lean Startup (Crown Currency, 2011). Ries uses it to discuss what a new startup should do when faced with an unexpected change, event, or fork in the road. And the answer is pivot.

It’s just like in basketball. In basketball, a player on offense at some point will stop and hold the ball. The defensive player then comes at him. What does the player on offense often do? He or she pivots away from the defensive player. Instead of getting flustered or frozen or overanalyzing the situation, instead of getting double-teamed and losing the ball, the shrewd offensive player simply pivots away from the problem into a hopefully better spot.

That’s the ticket.

But what does “pivoting” in a business sense mean exactly? It means, “This isn’t working, try that.” Or, “That isn’t working, try the other.” But what it doesn’t mean is ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away, or analyzing it to death. No, what pivoting means is being aware, noticing changes on the horizon, and then quickly adapting and adopting a new, better course.

Example: For 100 years, Nintendo made playing cards in Japan. In 1959, they struck a marketing deal with Disney, but then, a few years later, our friend change knocked and the bottom fell out of the playing card market. Noticing the success their partner was having with toys and animation, Nintendo pivoted to that arena.

Starbucks started in 1971 selling only espresso machines and coffee beans. Later, chief marketing director Howard Shultz went on a buying trip to Milan and saw people sipping espresso drinks at cafes throughout the city. Convinced that this change would soon come to America, he compelled Starbucks to accept this necessary pivot. How? By buying the company.

The point is, change can be big or brief. Pivots can be large or small. The trick to handling the inevitability of change is to notice it, accept it, not get frozen by it, and then do as Gandhi suggests and remake ourselves, and our businesses.