The Tightrope With Dan Smolen

The Design Thinker: Turning Childhood Dreams Into Business Success “People come to me realizing that something’s not working, or, that they have an aspiration of what they want. At the end of the day, they want to make a pivot to something else. In order to get down there and make that pivot they need a strategy. And what I tell people is that it may take multiple strategies for you to get where you want to be. And we will get there. The question is, are you ready for a marathon? Because, it’s not a sprint.” - Carla A. Fleming, CEO and Founder of Pivoting Strategies, LLC Carla Fleming’s gloriously happy childhood dreams of doing meaningful work included being a teacher, a doctor, and a journalist. To the casual observer, work dreams such as these seem disconnected, but not to Fleming, who says that, together, they pointed her to a career that’s all about solving difficult business problems: “A teacher helps you learn to be better, a doctor makes diagnoses to make you better, and the journalist figures out