Every team eventually reaches a point where they have to ask whether their idea or approach still holds the same promise it once did. Sometimes this uncertainty shows up as a feature that no longer resonates with users, a partnership that has grown strained, or a timeline sustained more by hope than by evidence. These moments tend to not announce themselves with clarity, but arrive as tension. Metrics appear to plateau, motivation dips just enough that you can feel it in the air, and before long, someone asks the quiet question: “Should we keep pushing forward, or is it time to shift?”
In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries calls this the “pivot or persevere” decision: a moment of truth where teams assess whether their current path is leading to sustainable progress or if it’s time to change direction. From a leadership perspective, the decision is often data-driven: test assumptions, evaluate results, and use what you learn to either adjust the model or stay the course. By design, this approach often emphasizes measurable outcomes and systematic learning as a structured way to reduce uncertainty and guide the team forward. However, it can sometimes overlook the subtler, less visible, signals that teams see and work with (or around) every day, which are equally important in shaping the next best step.
Being hands-on with the work gives the team a vantage point leadership doesn’t have. They notice and feel the moment when client feedback shifts tone or how much time an additional ‘red-tape hurdle’ takes to perform. The natural response to this is that teams often run quiet experiments of their own. They test new approaches in the margins trying slightly different ways of completing and advancing their craft. These micro-pivots often reveal new insights that metrics alone can’t, highlighting opportunities, patterns, frictions, or emergent behaviors that can be critical inputs to leadership in shaping the right course of action. That’s why, for teams, “pivot or persevere” isn’t just a question of strategy, but of how to surface insights and how leadership receives them.
It can take courage and persistence to share what you’re seeing, especially when momentum or optimism for the idea/approach is high. It’s rarely comfortable to say, “This might not be working,” especially when raising concerns may bring fear of unwanted attention or imply blame. Yet when these conversations are driven by curiosity, they often lead to decisions grounded not only in numbers, but in human experience.
The best outcomes come when everyone, leadership, teams, and partners, treat these moments as co-created. The goal isn’t to prove who’s right; it’s to see more clearly, together. Whether you pivot or persevere, what matters most is that the path forward is one everyone can commit to with conviction, not because it’s easy, but because it’s shared.
I’m proud to say that at R+R, we apply this way of thinking to what may be preserved as even small crossroads. We treat our work as thoughtful cycles of observation and testing that leads to learning and refining. This is not because we’re unsure of our expertise, but because responsiveness is part of how we deliver excellence. Tight feedback loops have been essential in guiding our shared decisions, whether we’re enhancing our services based on client clarity, assessing how people understand and associate with our brand, or ensuring our website meaningfully supports those who use it. Like all businesses, we aim to be consistently evolving–confident in who we are today and committed to becoming even better tomorrow.