Is progress always the goal?

Seth Godin – Linchpin Sessions Animation from Eskimo on Vimeo.

This visual snippet from a Seth Godin talk about what your company does for a living made its way around the web this week.

It occurred to me while watching this that progress isn’t always good.

Seth makes the statement that you are either racing to the top or racing to the bottom. If you are racing to the bottom, once you get there you are stuck. When is progressing to the bottom (or a place you are stuck) a good thing?

To me, this is the purpose of the pivot. This is the point where you change directions. The best play once you realize you are going down the wrong path is to go backwards. After taking a few steps back go a different or opposite direction.

The beauty of being in business is that you can always change. Racing to the top may be the goal or the goal may be to race to the people who care about what you do.

Sure, I believe you should work to get better. But only if getting better is better. If your marketing or business is broken, you don’t want to get better at being broken do you?