What’s in a (buzz)word?
Ask anyone who works at SHC and they will tell you that I cannot stand a buzzword. You know what I am talking about. It is buzzy, it is a description or term that you suddenly cannot escape – it feels like it is literally everywhere from social media to the conference room board meeting. So I was surprised as anyone when I started telling clients, neighbors, strangers in line at the grocery store, or basically anyone that would listen to me that, “SHC needs to pivot in the time of COVID. We need to proactively shift our services to meet what we anticipate the marketplace will need over the next 12-24 months and beyond.” (Do you spot the buzzword? Maybe not if you are an athlete – because pivot is just a term for footwork you do on the basketball court or soccer pitch.)
Last night as I went for my daily run, I started to think about the word pivot to distract myself from the oppressive heat and humidity. What does it really mean to pivot in business, and does it describe SHC’s activities over the past three months? As any good business owner and urban planner would do, I started to research its meaning in both standard and business vernacular. As a starting point, the Oxford Dictionary defines pivot as:
noun. The central point, pin, or shaft on which a mechanism turns or oscillates
verb. Turn on or as if on a pivot
Even though there is an obvious analogy, I do not think the standard definition quite captures what businesses truly mean when they say they are going to pivot their services or product offerings. So, I kept googling, which given the popularity of pivoting due to COVID-19 resulted in several pages of search results. While language differed across web pages and blogs, the takeaway is that business’s use pivot to describe a fundamental shift in their service or product offerings to meet the marketplace. Pivoting is in part what SHC has been up to over the past three months, but it does not fully describe our activities because we continue to work on the same types of projects we always have (there are just fewer of them, which makes business unsustainable). SHC is fortunate that we are a small firm, which means we can adjust, adapt, respond and pivot quickly. In the coming months we will be adding real estate brokerage to our service offerings (our pivot point) that we believe will be a value-add to both our private and public sector clients More details will be forthcoming, but it is an exciting addition to our firm that everyone at SHC is working towards with the hope of unrolling in the second half of 2020.
Using the word pivot to describe our expanded service offerings is accurate. But at SHC we should add that we are building on our foundation of land use specialization, adapting, diversifying and learning in an effort to shift and grow our services. The challenges of current events means that nearly all small businesses will need to pivot to a certain extent, and at SHC we are no different. What I learned last night on my less than enjoyable run is that there can be comfort in a buzzword because it is so recognizable and well understood - that’s pivot 15 times.
-Jennifer