What do my RV and your company have in common? 🤔

Picture this.

You’re on a mountain top, thousands of feet up in the air. A thick fog blankets the area, and visibility is a whopping 10 feet. Do you pivot or persist?

I had to persist.

I wasn’t planning on being on that mountain top. And I certainly wasn’t planning on executing a five-point turn when I could barely see my RV’s bumpers.

I was planning on a nice, uneventful road trip with my kids to visit my parents in San Diego for the holidays.

LA traffic had other plans (of course it did!), so we decided to try some alternative routes.

Spoiler alert: We shouldn’t have.

That’s how we ended up on the San Gabriefl mountains in the thick fog and rain with the option of turning around my 36 foot RV on a two-lane road (basically, impossible) or keep going up. So, I persisted.

Even when a vent fell off the roof and cold air was pouring in. My kids were yelling, “What do we do about this?” I yelled right back: “Even if I knew how to fix it, I can’t pull over!”

They had two choices: figure it out or sit and freeze. They (smartly) chose to stuff tape and towels inside the vent to close it off.

Persistence!

There we were, creeping up the mountainside with junk crammed in the vent, and I kept reminding myself, “It doesn’t matter if we go fast or slow. No one will pass us.”

So we went slow. We persisted. And eventually, slowly, we got where we needed to go.

Driving this huge RV and navigating rocky terrain is like helming a complex organization.

Things go wrong.

You can’t move quickly.

But once you know how to drive and respect how big it is, it’s actually quite straightforward.

A big company, like an RV, takes a long time to speed up and even longer to brake. But once it gets moving? Watch out! It’s a force to be reckoned with. (As my friend likes to say, “Tonnage wins!”)

So many large companies think they can’t do anything. They can’t change. They can’t pivot. They just are.

I disagree.

Persist or pivot?

While persistence is crucial, knowing when to pivot is also important. The difficulty is knowing when to do which.

On this RV trip, I ended going down a dead end street - thank you Google Maps! I had no choice at that point but to back up down the street and eventually execute a five-point turn in the middle of an intersection. I learned that I could indeed pivot my huge RVs if there’s just enough room to manuever.

Like my RV, you and your organization need to be ready to pivot and to persist. Give yourself the space and permission to turn around if needed. And, if you keep your company in tip-top shape, make sure you’re fueled up, batten down the hatches (literally!), tie down loose objects so they don’t go flying around, you’ll arrive. Slowly. But you’ll arrive.

You just have to keep going.

I’m curious: How have you persisted? When did you know it was time to pivot? Whether you hit a bump in the road yesterday, last month, last year, or even several years ago, I’d love to hear how you kept going. Hit reply and let me know!

– Charlene

My Latest:

• The purpose of a corporation is no longer to just maximize shareholder value –– it’s about stakeholder capitalism. But what the hell is that? And why does it matter? I break it down in my latest livestream.

• I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. But I do set priorities. In Leading Disruption, I share what leaders should be focused on this year so they can continue to be effective –– even in a permacrisis.

• Pulse check on 180 CEOs! Is stakeholder capitalism true progress…or just a PR stunt? Join me on Tuesday, January 17 to find out if it’s really being practiced.

Good Things: (Eva will supply from meeting notes)

• App I’m using: Streaks. I absolutely hate tracking things and that goes for habits. But research shows that tracking habits is the #1 to ensure you develop them. What I love about Streaks is that it integrates with Apple Health so it pulls in data from my Oura ring (I’m sleeping more consistently) and my weight from my digital scale (eek, not doing so well in this area after the holidays). Timed notification gently remind me it’s time to capture gratitudes or do my daily review. And I get a small endorphin hit seeing my streaks develop over time.

• Product I’m loving: Gaiam Foldable Yoga Mat. Whether you’re a committed yogi or embarking on a new practice, I can’t recommend a this enough. Floppy mats are such a pain to store! I travel with a foldable yoga mat. It’s not perfectly smooth or cushiony, but it definitely beats gross hotel floors and yoga studio mats!

Hack I’m trying: Teleprompter set-up. The great thing about a teleprompter is that you see your presentation, notes, or even the Zoom window so you’re looking right at the camera. The downside is it’s darn hard to set up! Here’s my cheat sheet of how to set one up, including the equipment you’ll need. Now, I can look at the camera the whole time and never have to look down.