Organisational Coaching

Are You Doing A Good Job?

Andrew — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 02:10:48 +0000

I am sure you think you are doing a good job, the point of this question is how do you know? Grab a broom, umbrella or some other long stick. Find a space where you will not damage anything by accident and try to balance the stick on the end of your finger. Did you manage to balance it? If not, try again. As long as the object you have chosen is heavy enough, this should be fairly easy. Now close your eyes and try again. Did you manage to balance the stick this time? Unless you have spent time practicing this little trick, you will find it close to impossible.

This difference is feedback. When we can see the stick, just as it starts to topple we can adjust. When we close our eyes, we don't know that the stick is toppling until it's too late to make an adjustment.

This is all pretty straight forward. So what stops us from applying it in our organisations?

How do you know that you are doing a good job?

How would your colleagues answer that question? The key word is "doing".

Many would point to the positive comments from their boss, their annual appraisal, bonus or salary increment or even satisfied customers. These measures tell people that they have done a good job. That is too late. Once a job is completed, we can't change the outcome.

So let's shorten the timeframe a little.

At the end of the day or the week, how do you know you are doing a good job?

We have the best chance of success if there is some form of active feedback in our environment which gives us a strong indication of whether we are on track to success. If we keep doing what we are doing, then we will be successful.

It's our job of managers to create that feedback.

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Mathematicians In A High Performing Team

Andrew — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 02:13:16 +0000

Examples of high performing teams are pretty rare so whenever I find one, especially away from the realm of sport, it captures my attention. Amir D. Aczel's book¹ The Artist and the Mathematician, The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki the Genius Mathematician who Never Existed surprised me with such an example.

The setting is Post World War Two France. A group of elite mathematicians were struggling to teach University level mathematics to their students. Providing such an education was difficult because the existing texts were outdated and there was no consistent approach to the curriculum. Their answer was to work together on creating a new theoretical framework for mathematics education along with the associated texts.

Each person was an established mathematician in their own right and they recognised that their goal would be lost if it became associated too closely with anyone person. So partly as a gag, and partly as a convenience they created the fictional character of Nicolas Bourbaki. Bourbaki grew into a comprehensive charade with a detailed biography, a publishing story and even a sister.

Bourbaki was amazingly successful. If you have studied mathematics at senior school level or at pretty much any University the curriculum would still be heavily influenced by the theoretical framework established by this group.

In the 1950s, Bourbaki published one or two volumes every year, and mathematics students rushed to the book stores to purchase these books and finally learn mathematics in a rigorous and comprehensive and accurate way. (page 108)

The complete published works of Bourbaki covered 10,000 pages. They met three times a year and while the members of the group changed there were usually never more than 12 members.

So how did they do it?

They were a high performing team.

They had the right team constitution - the right people in the team.

As noted above, they were recognised mathematicians, they were in teaching positions and they had a broad outlook on life,

they knew so much and knew it so well ... that they could go to the essential points. (p 114)

They showed tremendous commitment to the team's goals.

All the members of Bourbaki shared a strong belief in the worthiness of the project they were undertaking

Each member worked very hard. In between their meetings they produced preliminary reports covered 1,000 to 2,000 pages per year.

They had a powerful culture of collaboration.

A group of such strong minded and intellectual personalities doesn't lead to easy discussions. They planned the meetings intentionally "keeping in our discussions a carefully disorganized character".

There was no president and anyone could speak at any time.

Discussions often turned into chaotic shouting matches in which an obscure point in a text was fought over by various individuals. (p 114)

Don't be misled by the chaos and shouting matches. That was Bourbaki's approach to collaboration. The culture in your team will be different.

The key is the foundation. The group was described as:

altogether a truly unselfish, anonymous, demanding work by people striving to give the best possible exposition of basic mathematics, moved by their belief in its unity and ultimate simplicity (p 116)

Unselfish, anonymous, demanding, striving, moved by belief and unity. These attributes are found in all high performance teams.

The group lasted about 20 years and then dwindled out for the usual reason, it had achieved the goal it set out to achieve.

The right constitution, complete commitment and a culture of collaboration. How does your team look?

Aczel, Amir, The Artist and the Mathematician, The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki the Genius Mathematician who Never Existed, Published 2006, Thunder's Mouth Press. ↩

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Language of HR

Andrew — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 03:17:19 +0000

HR professionals come in all forms. Some are excellent, some are poor, most are somewhere in the middle.

How do you tell?

The only reliable answer is to look at the results they create in the business. However, if you are looking for a quick read, listen to how they speak.

I have the privilege of knowing quite a few excellent HR leaders. When they make a contribution they make sense, they clearly understand what is happening in the business. They ask questions about the business, they are passionate about helping the business. They speak like business people.

In other companies where HR struggles to be an accepted part of the management team, they use HR jargon.

Interesting ...

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Team Games

Andrew — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 02:12:49 +0000

A couple of times a year I find myself involved in an event with both work sessions and team building. My involvement is with the work sessions and is always focused on core business issues. The organisers will often schedule in some team building components for a change of pace.

All professional team building organisations have trained facilitators to lead the activity and draw out the lessons. In each case I have seen the participants understand the lessons and become good at working as a team.

Yet I am constantly surprised to see that when we return for the work sessions, everything that was learnt during the team building has evaporated. Just one session before the participants were communicating, relying on each other or stopping to plan a little before jumping into action. Now they don't.

What happened?

There is a clue in the last posting Context is Everything. Learning in one context does not mean we will apply in another context.

In activity or game based team building the teams are learning how to "win" at the task they have been assigned. They are learning that each activity has certain declared rules and even more unwritten rules. They learn that success requires a certain type of interaction between the participants. They are becoming good at wining the game. Unfortunately this game is not the same as winning as a management team.

So when they get back into the business focused sessions they forget the rules of the previous game and start playing by the old rules. The learning is not carried over from one context to another. For team building to be effective we have to close the gap between learning and application. At Vaughan Govier we prefer to make them the same.

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Stay in context

Andrew — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 07:30:57 +0000

The things that people do in the name of science. Imagine agreeing to help with a research project about memory and turning up to see a set of diving equipment waiting for you.

It was an actual experiment that gave fascinating insights. The method works like this. * Take a person underwater and give them a set of facts to remember.

Make sure they have firmly committed those facts to memory before bringing them back to the surface.

Test their recall.

Immediate recall is usually fine.
Wait a couple of days and then test again.

As we would expect, recall drops.
Take them back under water and test them again.
Guess what? Recall improves.

What is going on here?

It an interesting insight into how we learn. Our ability to remember facts is best when we have to recall those facts in the same environment, or context, that we were in when we learnt that information.

This is something we accept intuitively. If we have misplaced our keys, then we retrace our steps to help remind us where they could be hiding.

So learn underwater and we will remember best when we are underwater. Learn in a class room and we remember best when we are back in the class room. Learn in a seminar room and we recall best when we are in the seminar room. It turns out that learning is related to many things including our state, mood, environment and language.¹

The simple guide is that if it's important to remember something, learn it in the same context as you will apply it.

This is one of the big challenges in any coaching, management development or organisational coaching. So often we take people away from their work (the context they will apply) into a training environment.

If it's important, learn it in the same context you will apply it.

For a longer summary please read the wikipedia entry ↩

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Welcome to 2011

Andrew — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 03:39:37 +0000

As we rush into 2011, let's pause for just a moment.

In other words, let's make this year special.

We wish you all the best for 2011.

Cheers, Andrew

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A simple difference between a coach and a consultant

Andrew — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 11:17:11 +0000

I was at a lunch with an aspiring entrepreneur we were discussing the difference between the role of a coach and consultant. It was very relevant to her business and her value proposition.

She came up with a brilliant way of describing the difference.

During a conversation, the consultant is always thinking of the next answer, the coach is always thinking of the next question.

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Are you a Manager or a Leader?

Andrew — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:59:08 +0000

... for the last 30 years, it has been ideas about leadership, not management, that have come to dominate our conversations and our bookshelves. We believe it is time to redress the balance. Leadership is about the traits and behaviors that make us worth following. Management is about how we get work done through others.¹

As you read Organisational Coaching, you may notice that I always refer to "managers" and "management". This often causes grief as someone comes back with the inevitable, "we need leaders and not managers".

When did management become such as bad thing? Management is defined as "getting things done through people" (from Old French ménagement "the directing", from Latin manu agere "to lead by the hand"). Management is a well defined word. A manager delivers results through people. Companies need managers to operate and succeed.

What is a leader?

The leader of the Tour De France - gets to wear the yellow jersey.

The leader is the one out the front.
Comic book visitors from mars allows always ask to "take me to your leader".

The one who can represent the people.
Richard Feyman was a leader in the field of quantum physics.

The leader is the predominate expert.
Dell and Amazon were considered leaders in their adoption of web technology.

The leader was the early adopter.
In many charity organisations the leader is often the one who does all the work.

The leader is the worker. 
It is common now for organizations to want to develop leadership in all their staff.

Leadership is commitment and initiative.

In this context it is also ironically the ability to follow.
A leader is also the short strip of blank film at the beginning and end of a film which is used to connect it to the spool or to thread the film onto the project.

The leader is overhead.

So what is a leader?

Unfortunately in common usage the "leader" has become whatever the person using the word wants it to be. This is the problem with leadership, it's too fluffy, ill-defined. It's hard to hold someone accountable for poor "leadership". We can hold someone accountable for poor management.

Among the many skills and attributes of excellent managers are those which are often ascribed to leadership; vision, decisiveness, act with purpose and intent, single minded and focussed, have a view of the future, engage the support of their people, integrity, ability to positively influence and so on. Good managers have these characteristics and poor managers do not.

Managers achieve and deliver results and they are accountable for those results. Aspire to be an excellent manager and you will develop leadership along the way.

Birkenshaw J and Goddard J,What is Your Management Model?, MITSloan Management Review, Winter 2009, Volume 50, No. 2. ↩

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Do You Need a Coach or a Consultant?

Andrew — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:17:11 +0000

The previous post on Coach or Consultant? may have mistakenly given the impression that consultants are bad. Far from it. The intent of that post was to differentiate consultants and coaches.

When do you want a consultant and when do you want a coach? You want a consultant when the organisation does not have the required skills and only needs those skills occassionally.

How often do we renovate our homes? Not often for most people. This means it is not worth the effort for most of us to develop the architectural, interior design or contractor management skills required to successfully renovate our homes. We need a consultant in the form of an interior designer or building contractor. We do not need a coach.

Consider a sporting team. Any team needs to know how to play the sport. They do not regularly need a surgeon to deal with knee injuries or a motivational speaker. These are consultants they engage when required.

You want a coach when the skills are central to your business on an on-going basis.

All businesses need management. It is core and central to the success of any business. That is why to strengthen the management team you want to employ an organisational coach or a management coach (executive coach) not an consultant. Coaches are people who build the capability in the organisation.

The sports coach helps the team become stronger. The coach is not on the field playing the game. To be successful the players must have the ability to win the game.

Don't be afraid to use a consultant when you need one.

Smart business people know when to go for advice and skills they don't have. In these situations, get a consultant.

However please don't get a consultant to help you develop skills that are central to your business. For that you need a coach.

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Coach or Consultant?

Andrew — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:38:49 +0000

With the rise of coaching as a trendy thing to do, many consultants have stopped calling themselves "consultants" and started calling themselves "coaches".

This is both unfortunate and misleading. Coaches and Consultants are not the same. So what are the differences between coaches and consultants?

Consultants	Coaches
Consultants are people whose approach is built on "I know what you should do, let me show you how"	Coaches say "let's find the best way together"
The consultant's goal is to show how capable they are and how much they know.	The coach's goal is to show how capable the client is and how much the client can achieve.
A consultant's work is done when they have delivered their agreed scope of work.	The coaches goal is done when the client has reached their goal.
In a consulting engagement, the consultant is doing most of the work.	In a coaching engagement the client does most of the work.

The collarary to the previous point is that the cost of a consulting engagements are more expensive because the consultant has to do so much more work.

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