Week Four: Launch

While piloting involves a series of continual, small experiments that provide information about your next move, the Launch stage is when you make the big decision that completes your pivot. Cycle through the first three stages—Plant, Scan, Pilot—as many times as necessary to feel secure when you launch. Sometimes this can happen over months, sometimes years!

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Launch Stage Tips:

  • Courage will not arrive in full before your launch; it will appear afterward, when the confidence from making a life-changing decision settles in.

  • Separate decisions from difficult conversations. Get clear on what you know in your gut to be true for you, before you worry about how to deliver the news or what the ramifications will be.

  • Asking whether a launch worked is a trick question—they work no matter what because they get you unstuck. Decisions are data.

 

Reflection Questions:

  • What linchpin launch criteria are most important to your decision? Financial, date-based timing, progress milestones, gut instinct, and choices that hinge on others.

  • How do you define failure? What will move you into action without sending you into your panic zone?

  • If you wait too long to pivot, change will choose you. How can you make smart career decisions in the face of remaining uncertainty and fear?

 

Action to take this week—choose one of the three (or make up your own!):

  • Rank your top three launch timing criteria

  • Set a deadline to decide about your launch—or to pull the trigger on it!

  • Make a list of 10 things you’ll learn from this launch, whether or not you succeed by traditional standards

 

Optional Template Exercises to Jog Your Thinking:

  • Launch Timing Criteria Checklist: You have reduced risk by cycling through the first three stage of the Pivot Method (Plant, Scan, Pilot), but how do you know when it is time to go all in? This template, excerpted from the book, will help you identify and prioritize your most important launch criteria.

  • Pivot Hexagon: Launch Trade-offs and Values Evaluation: Some launches involve tradeoffs or tough decisions. Print out the Pivot Hexagon (excerpted from the book) to rate your values, and to create a scorecard for each decision you are considering.

 

Pivot Podcasts:

 

P.S. Don’t forget to tweet your #PIVOTsprint progress with the hashtags #PIVOTsprint and #nextmove! For a complete guide to planning your pivot, check out Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One.