3 Ts of taking of strategic leaps
Below is a summary of our conversation with Alice Truswell at Snoop on the "3 Ts" of taking a leap - trajectory, theory of change, and timing. Read on to learn more about how to take each of these into account when taking a big leap or making a big decision.
We had the pleasure of speaking with Alice Truswell last week, Head of Commercial at Snoop. Her leaps include making the leap from Australia to the UK and leaping from big corporate jobs to being the first employee at a start-up. Throughout her leaps, Alice highlighted a few strategic choices she made across three dimensions –
· Trajectory (Where)
· Theory of Change (How)
· Timing (When)
Trajectory: Does where you’re going line up with where you want to go
Alice shared that her move from Australia to the UK was prompted she realized what would remain unchanged if she stayed in her same job. However, she felt like there was a gap between her work experience – big corporates, and her sense of self – someone curious and courageous. This ‘itch’, to do something different and shake things up led her to graduate school in the UK and then to joining an extremely early stage fintech company. Alice identified the gap between where she was headed – a comfortable, corporate career in Australia – and where she wanted to go – to a more global environment and taking a riskier career move. Reflecting on our personal and professional career trajectories allows us to evaluate if we are still headed in the direction we want to go and if a course correction, or leap, is necessary.
Theory of change: How to decide what type of leap to take
A theory of change refers to an approach or ‘how’ someone believes something should be changed. For Alice, after identifying that she wanted to stay in the banking industry, she was faced with the choice of whether she wanted to help change a big bank from the inside, or whether she wanted to do so from the outside as a disruptor. She decided the latter, noting that she wanted to create change that route, having already had experience attempting change from the ‘inside’ at her prior bank. Deciding to go the route of disruption via a start-up was Alice deciding “how” she wanted to take this leap of moving to the UK, what she was looking for and how to achieve that. For other leaps or other types of leaps, deciding “How” might also involve geography, as it did for Alice moving to the UK, or the “how” might be deciding between size of firms, types of roles, or organizational models and approaches. When making a leap it’s important to consider which of these aspects you are intentionally changing and which you plan to keep the same. These choices can decide some of the details of which leaps to take and ‘how’ to take them.
Timing: When to take a leap
One of the other considerations Alice made in terms of moving continents and joining an early stage start up was her own personal timing. Given her personal and professional goals and what she wanted to learn and accomplish, she knew that if she didn’t take a big risk by joining a startup or doing something different in the upcoming few years, that it would only get more difficult to make this leap later on. For her, she saw her risk tolerance only decreasing and knew that if this was a leap she ever wanted to make (which she did) that the sooner the better. Timing is a key factor in any leap, whether it makes ‘sense’ across financial, personal, professional, or any other relevant circumstances. By drawing out the upside and downside of a leap, it is easier to evaluate how they might change based on when the leap is made. Of course, there is always risk when taking a leap, but there are ways to temporally reduce that risk.
Our conversation with Alice helped highlight these considerations when taking a leap – our current trajectory and if a leap would help us get to where we want to go; our theory of change of how we can achieve our goals, and timing of when to change things up versus when to wait them out. Assessing leaps across these dimensions can provide clarity of what leaps to take and how and when to take them.
