Weaving and pivoting

One aspect of wisdom is knowing when to abandon a project. In my leisure time I work with fiber arts; knitting, spinning, weaving, and sewing. Recently I was working on a weaving project with a beautiful yarn. The project was going to be a lace scarf; light weight and in a deep teal color. It takes time to set up the loom and start weaving. After many hours of planning and set up I was finally creating the cloth. The pattern was turning out just as I imagined, except the yarn kept breaking. I would repair it and keep going, but it kept breaking over and over. Finally I abandoned the project. I was sad to see all that yarn wasted. I knew early in the project it wasn’t going well, but stayed with it anyway.

We also do this as leaders. A new idea is launched, project started. We have great hopes and plans for the project. Resources are applied and everything is put into place. At some point we understand that it can’t be as we envisioned. We have to pull the plug. It is hard to pull the plug, yet necessary. The challenge is to do it sooner. I know the team has learned some valuable information from the failure, we can take the information forward into the next project. However, I don’t want to go beyond the lessons and waste resources. The expertise is in stopping at the right time and moving to another project.

Recently I read a FastCompany article on Eric Reis who has received credit for the term pivot in the business literature. Stopping a project and using what you learned to make a change without losing the vision is what Reis calls pivoting. In health care we have to get better at pivoting, even if it means some really beautiful yarn gets pulled off the loom.