Why Coaching Strategy?
What good is a strategy when it’s not clear where you are going?
I guess my claim and my product offering beg for the question: what is that thing – coaching strategy? Let’s have a look!
Also – here’s a warning: contrary to my usual coaching style, I AM offering strong opinions in this article, without asking first.😉
If that’s not for you – maybe skip this? Although I’d be sad to see you go; in fact, I’m hoping you’ll stay and leave YOUR opinion, too!
I actually tried to look up a definition for strategy in my old business textbooks. They tell me it’s derived from even older European military handbooks, and go into great detail how strategies include a lot of detail, mainly on the situation you’re in, your surroundings (markets), and all internal stuff (resources). When you put all that together, you should know where to go. Great.
I’m more than slightly peeved by that for several reasons:
I am a small business, not a military operation.
It sounds very reactive, and not very proactive to me.
It has the potential to drop into an alarming and unfocussed amount of detailed data.
… I’m sure I can find many more reasons IF I spend as much time thinking about this as some companies spend on their strategy (planning) process.
What I have seen in my post-graduate years as well as in my years in corporate life (where I actually spent a brief stint also consulting the military of all clients):
A lot of institutions take that detailed, reactive, prepare for all scenarios, planning process very seriously. So seriously in fact, that they easily spend more than a quarter of the year researching, discussing, and aggregating data on all levels of the institution. If the higher ups deem the data as not sufficient, more time and money is spent on strategy consultants. Who then bring in a plethora of additional data. So much data, in fact, that it’s difficult to come to decisions. (Just to be clear - I’ve been both a strategy consultant as well as a corporate executive in my life…).
And as often as not, there won’t be any decision, or if there are, they won’t be implemented. Often, because people can’t see why that decision may have been taken in the first place.
Which then leads to a discussion of accountability and the astonishing tidbit that MORE people need to be involved to get MORE accountability and higher implementation rates.
I find that astonishing, because to me it seems obvious that this will certainly increase the accountability for the data. Accountability for the strategy decisions taken that are based on that data? Why should I feel accountable for a decision I have not taken, but only provided some data for?
>> Et voilà, that is the crux of the matter in my opinion.<<
Throw in the fact that instead of FOCUSSING resources on achieving an institutions’ vision, they are actually using even more resources in an unfocussed approach.
Add-on
I strongly believe that coaching a focussed strategy development for the leaders will lead to a much more implementable framework AND more accountability by those who matter: the leaders leading change. Sorry folks, there’s nowhere to hide here ;-) (PS - the inflation of variations of “leader” is absolutely intentional. Just saying. Been there!)
Coming back to COACHING STRATEGY.
Here’s the thing: In coaching, I follow a pretty simple and pretty lean approach: Your topic – your goal – the resources you need – your implementation strategy. It’s lean, it’s working easily, it’s focussed, and it usually doesn’t waste resources – neither your own nor any that you need to pull in.
So why not follow that approach in an institutions’ strategy?
Surely, if your systems are working, it should be feasible to pinpoint the topic or issue you’re having. If not, that might be a case where a brief (!) consulting project might be warranted.
Next, the goal: You need someone willing to take responsibility, accountability, and personal risk to be the one defining the goal. To be frank, it is a question of having the right person in the right position. And it might be worthwhile redefining the job profiles for these people.
As to the resources – I mean, if the strategy planning process is any indication, I would bet that most institutions have that step down pat. They could most likely even benefit from streamlining it and redirecting resources to the actual implementation strategy.
Which leads as to the last, and equally important step: an implementation that is worth its name and is focused on a predefined goal. If you have streamlined and redirected resources, that is one success factor. Having a goal actually already decided upon and communicated is the second important success factor. All of which can then be complemented by HR strategy as well as Comp & Ben. I do believe, and it is my experience, that the first two factors will play a major role in the success of any implementation, and are often overlooked in favour of – you know it, more data.
So when I am offering COACHING STRATEGY – I am not offering your people more data. I am offering you the opportunity to work out the topic and your goal! If you are interested, we can also discuss my thoughts on resources and implementation. I am convinced though, that your institutions will do fine with these!
If you are still reading and interested – please leave your thoughts or get on touch!
Here’s more on goals and strategies…
I totally get how paying a compliment will make us feel better – us as the ones paying the compliment. And I also get how the assumption comes about that the recipient will feel better, too. After all, we are full of good intentions – and intend to “spread the love and positivity”.
How do we make sure that the recipient will indeed feel the love - and not resentment, anger or worse? Let's find out!