The pivot nobody planned
When I left culinary school and walked into my first management consulting role, more than a few people raised an eyebrow. What does a sous chef know about P&L analysis? As it turns out — quite a lot.
Running a commercial kitchen is a masterclass in operations. You optimize labor percentages under real-time pressure, manage a supply chain that expires in days, and lead a team that has zero margin for error on Thursday night service. The skills translated almost perfectly.
But more importantly, the pivot forced me to become a beginner again.
The underrated power of beginner's mind
There's a concept in Zen Buddhism — shoshin, or "beginner's mind" — which refers to approaching a subject with openness, even when you have experience. The problem with deep expertise is that it can calcify your thinking. You stop asking "why do we do it this way?" because you already know the answer.
When you step into a new field, you have no choice but to ask that question constantly. And sometimes the answer you get is: we actually don't know why we do it this way.
That's where the real opportunity hides.
From consulting to product: the second pivot
My move from hospitality consulting into product management wasn't as dramatic — management consulting is already a stepping stone for many PM paths. But the second pivot, into cloud security product management, was genuinely unexpected.
I didn't set out to specialize in security. I took a role at Acquia that needed someone who could sit comfortably between technical teams and executive stakeholders, build roadmaps under ambiguity, and communicate compliance requirements to people who found them boring. It turned out that was a description of me.
The lesson: your next chapter doesn't always announce itself. Sometimes you walk through an open door and realize, six months later, that it was the right one.
What iteration actually looks like
Iteration isn't chaos. It's not just jumping from thing to thing because you're restless. It has structure:
- You commit deeply to each phase. I didn't dabble in consulting — I delivered projects that generated 3× ROI for hotel properties.
- You extract transferable skills intentionally. After each role, ask yourself: what did I get genuinely good at here that I couldn't get elsewhere?
- You stay curious about adjacent spaces. My interest in cloud security didn't start with a job posting. It started with reading about FedRAMP authorization processes on a weekend because I found it genuinely interesting.
The practical upside
Here's something nobody tells you about pivoting: it's a career moat.
Someone who has only ever worked in security product management knows security product management well. I know it and I know what it looks like when an organization has poor operational discipline, when a leadership team is misaligned on priorities, and how to restructure a fine dining menu for higher margin — and how that problem isn't actually different from restructuring a product portfolio.
The connecting thread across all of it is systems thinking. Every domain, at a sufficient level of abstraction, is a system. Once you're fluent in reading systems, you can move between them.
The honest cost
I should be transparent: iteration has a cost. Pivoting takes time. Credibility in a new field doesn't come instantly. There were moments in each transition where I felt behind, out of place, or like I was performing confidence I didn't fully feel.
But discomfort is data. It tells you that you're growing.
If your career feels frictionless, it might mean you've stopped pushing.
What's your experience with career pivots? I'd be curious to hear how others have navigated the uncertainty of changing fields.