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The right results come from the right
people doing the right things at the right time in the right way for the
right reasons.” Mike Jay
Coaching is a methodology for improving and developing people and
organizations through right action.
We often view the ability to create wealth and keep a customer as the
most important roles of leadership. Yet, it really isn’t enough of a
noble cause to accomplish the real big things, is it?
In this book the organization is considered to be a framework for the
exchange of value. It helps us to keep organizational life in
perspective. Organization is the structure providing for the exchange of
value. I admit I still struggle with the definition of an organization,
and while I don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing, it is not about
struggle.
You will hear the term effortless used throughout the book with many
different nouns, as work in today’s world with all of our modern
attributes should not be about effort and work, but about contribution
and flow. Never before have we had the opportunities that abound today.
We literally are at the dawn of a new age, hardly capable of being
known, yet fully emerging as we live and breathe.
This book is about this new organization--living and prospering in it
while finding an uncommon happiness through effortless contribution. My
objective is to help you help others find their own place in this
organization. To find their own best way of contributing and that inner
sense of well-being that burns deep within all of us—everyday.
Work and organization need not be about struggle and strife--scarcity
and greed. Work is probably the most significant human bond. The
integration of work offers us the opportunity for abundance and
satisfaction.
Organizational Effectiveness
The short sidetrack above should not distract you from the central issue
of right action—for it is merely the underlying foundation for it. Right
action depends on the individual and on the collective action taken as a
matter of choice each and every moment we process our thoughts. Right
action is a matter of deep inner being that is often prevented from
surfacing by personal and organizational barriers. However, in each and
every moment, we have the opportunity, and some would say the
obligation, to surface right action.
“Understanding how we diagnose and construct our experience, take
action, and monitor our behavior while simultaneously achieving our
goals is crucial to understanding and enhancing effectiveness.”
Argyris & Schon, Theory in Practice, 1974
This is, of course, easier said than done. While this book contains the
where with all or theory and practices to help facilitate that for
individuals and organizations, it is beyond the scope of our time here
together to fully explore right action for you in all of your roles and
their dimensions. Allow me to offer to you my experience and synthesis
of how to coach right action in organizations—to create organizational
effectiveness and agility.
Integrating Right Action?
It is important to integrate personal and organizational
effectiveness--simultaneously. However, I have to focus the light of our
attention and consciousness on the question: How to create a system in
an organization or workgroup that allows the opportunities for right
action to surface and persist.
You will notice that we make reference to the surfacing of right action
as opposed to having to create it? This is done on purpose. If we view
the process of surfacing right action as something already existing
rather than constructing it from scratch, I think we can see that our
system of approach will be much different. The methods of discovering
right action, along with the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) that
are required for competence in surfacing right action as opposed to
constructing it, are not always similar.
While this book is about developing and improving the competencies we
will need to master in order to remove the barriers to right action, it
is also about people. These competencies are made up of the KSAs that
people will learn and master. In later chapters we will discuss fully
the integration of theory and practice.
Components of Right Action
Let’s for a moment go back to the concept of right action. We said that
right action was “the right people, doing the right things, at the right
time, in the right way, for the right reasons.”
If we look at each component in the right action system, we will
discover the reason for including it in the equation.
Right People
“It is a lot easier to hire the right people to begin with than to fix
them later.” TOPGRADING, Bradford D. Smart, Ph.D.
The above quote from Bradford Smart’s latest book, TOPGRADING: How
leading companies win by hiring, coaching and keeping the right people,
sums up the importance of the right people in my view. So much of our
time as change agents is spent working with the wrong people—people we
are stuck with? It is clear that in order to be a great company or great
workgroup you need to have great people, or ordinary people working
together to do great things! Yet, so much of the time, we find ourselves
working with people who are not ready, willing and able to do the job
they have been assigned.
While this book deals effectively with coaching in all situations.
However preventing a mismatch; recruiting, hiring and training the best
person for the job cannot be overlooked. Fix your problems before they
start! Coaching a person who is ready, willing and able is a whole lot
different than interacting with someone who is not.
Surfacing right action in the former is truly effortless, while the
latter can be a challenge for even the most masterful of coaches at
best, impossible in the least. Many coaching programs discuss the person
who is not “coachable.” A person who is not ready, willing, or able
populates that subset of people.
I would recommend TOPGRADING for no other reason than to see how Smart
helps us understand how different people fit into A, B and C
possibilities. He fully demonstrates the effectiveness of how leading
companies prosper because they spend 80% of their time with the people
falling into the A class. He indicates that an effective strategy is to
hire the best possible candidate available for the job based on an
extensive interviewing process that is delineated in his book.
The old adage “People are your most important asset” is wrong. The right
people are your most important asset. Jim Collins, Turning Goals
Into Results, HBR, July-Aug, 1999, p.77
Right Things
The first part of the equation is fairly simple, start well—end well.
However from here on things get pretty complex. What is the right thing?
This question in itself is probably responsible for more books, papers,
articles and conversation than most other topics except the right
reasons.
The right thing has a way of being highly elusive especially when the
right thing today is not the right thing tomorrow in an ambiguous
environment! However, the right thing can also be discovered with the
proper methodology. In fact, the quality of the right thing will improve
with the use of the coaching methodology we describe in this book.
The focus throughout the book often centers on the question what is the
right thing--for the person coaching, the person being coached and the
system or the organization? Simply put, the right thing is whatever
content, delivery, product or service required. Many of these values
will be in conflict.
In the case of the person coaching, the right thing may be something we
say or refrain from saying. It might appear as a question, a form of
feedback, an idea or perhaps even silence. For a customer service
person, the solution might appear in what the customer wants and the
company can afford. For a leader, the right thing might be that vision
thing, the correct selection of CFO, a new product idea or even a
smooth, quiet ride through the countryside.
Each moment in time defines rightness or fit. The ability to do the
right thing is within each of us. It may not be the right thing for
everyone but at that precise moment it might be the right thing for us—a
chance to work for another company, an opportunity to pursue a lifelong
interest or the action taken to help someone in need.
To do the right thing requires awareness and understanding of one’s
self, the situation and the desired outcomes--either shared or held
individually. It must meet a host of moral, ethical and legal criteria.
These criteria can be complex that at times we find ourselves pulled in
two directions at once, yet underneath it all, we know the right thing.
An effective coaching interaction surfaces the right thing at the right
time, even under the most ambiguous of circumstances.
Right Time
Timing is essential. Almost everything can be fixed except time. Time
passes and often you get just one chance to do it right. Accountants
talk of efficiency. In systems, we measure efficiency, the time and
resources it takes to do it right the first time. As an individual or
organization, we need to focus on doing the right thing at the right
time because of the costs involved in doing it over and the speed in
which the business environment is changing shape. Regis McKenna’s book
called REAL TIME: Preparing for the Age of the Never Satisfied Customer
brings into view how critical timing is to both individuals and
organizations.
“Companies best equipped for the twenty-first century will consider
investment in real time systems as essential to maintaining their
competitive edge and keeping their customers. By this I mean that they
will use information and telecommunications technology to respond to
changing circumstances and even more important, customer expectations
within the smallest lapse of time.” Regis McKenna
Clearly, we have no choice but to take into consideration how time
affects everything in our personal and organizational lives. From being
on time to seeing your child perform in a play, to having the right
thing ready for a customer precisely—on time. People and organizations
have NO CHOICE but to seriously consider the impact of time on
everything—including the right time to relax!
Coaching is about timing!
Without a doubt, the most exciting thing about coaching is that it
brings about the consideration and importance of timing—through
interaction. When we take the time or the opportunity to connect with
people, to clarify meaning and to make commitments that are healthy,
wealthy and wise—our time is well spent.
Right Way
This book is about a right way because the right way is the way that it
needs to be when it works! On the surface, however, we don’t always know
the right way. Many times we will unconsciously do things in a way that
is not representative of the knowing we all have access to deep inside
us.
“The environment in which we operate is significantly more complex than
what the human mind can process at a given moment. In order for the
human mind to deal with reality, we must abstract from the buzzing
confusion of everyday life by using abstract concepts.” Chris
Argyris, Org Dynamics, Autumn 1982
Quite often, the right way becomes something that has worked in the past
or something that is familiar. Due to complexity we tend to use these
previously successful right ways to handle more and more challenges—to
the point that they are no longer the right way. One of my favorite
quotes from Abraham Maslow demonstrates this modus operandi, “he who is
good with a hammer thinks everything is a nail.”
The right way syndrome can be tested and often determined from using
coaching methods. This is why coaching has become so popular among the
fad of the month practitioners. As a way, coaching is participative and
not directive as other ways and by rule, much more appreciative of
people. In organizations, it is easy to sub-optimize the system by using
less than ideal solutions that are not right ways.
Ask anyone who has been in a coaching relationship for any period of
time and regardless of whether they like their coach or not, they will
feel more aware of themselves and their organizational patterns. The
mere fact that two people relate to one another and discuss things that
are not normally discussed has the power of unleashing forces within us
that are seldom seen. This relationship can facilitate the right way.
One mistake often made is addressed clearly throughout the book. Not
everyone can or should be a coach. However, everyone should learn to use
coaching KSAs (knowledge, skills and abilities).
The right way is therefore, determined mostly by the actor acting in
accordance with the situational needs with unbending principles. If we
understand this paradox, then using coaching KSAs can surface or test
the right way, whether we are a coach or not. Most times, the right way
is a perception and not a truth. This confuses most people because so
many people have been taught to believe that there is a one right way to
everything (remember Maslow?).
In a complex and ambiguous world such as we live and work in, very few
things are universally true. We perceive them to be, but such is just
not the case. We do not see the world as it is, but how we are.
If I asked you—for just one moment—to suspend all your truths and ask
you to find the right way to do something, you would probably use
coaching KSAs automatically. Not knowing would cause you to start with a
beginner’s mind. It is obvious that you would have to probably connect
with someone, clarify issues and then commit to the right way for that
situation.
Of course, it is important to always consider the right reasons while we
are discovering the right way, but that goes without saying.
Right Reasons
I saved the best for last! For the right reasons is the most written and
talked about subject of mankind. Whole nations have been annihilated for
not having the right reason on their side! Our entire democracy exists
for the right reasons. Each and everyday we think we are doing things
for the right reasons. We are individually and collectively guided by
the right reasons, yet why don’t we all have the same reasons?
Because the right reasons are highly personal and often very
subjective—often hidden deep within our cognitive and emotional
conditioning—as they are interpreted from rising complexity out of
abstract concepts.
As we discussed in right way, there are some universal truths but not as
many as we subscribe to and believe. In business, the right reasons have
to be motivating, empowering, energizing, on solid legal ground,
compassionate. Compassionate? Yes, that too! It is no longer acceptable
to hide behind a stoic truth about how the organization is all-powerful
and dictates the lives of its constituents, its market and its buyers! A
new world has dawned and we now live in a buyer’s market, driven by
overcapacity, global competition, ambiguous and turbulent circumstances,
a deteriorating environment and a deep need to connect and belong to
each other.
The Right Reasons?
The right reasons today are different from the right reasons of
yesterday. Yes, we need to have the same moral compass, yet the moral
points have become more graduated. We cannot live and work any longer at
the benefit of our environment. No longer are there people lined up at
our doors willing to work for anything we chose to declare as fit.
The time has passed when we were able to command the world’s markets and
our employee’s time, life and existence. A fragile, yet dynamic balance
is coming into vogue where we must—for the right reasons—conduct
ourselves individually and collectively in harmony with one another and
our environment.
Coaching is one of the few ways to approach and dialogue about the right
reasons at the individual level.
• Leaders describe for us the right reasons in their noble visions.
• Managers decide our course of actions for the right reasons.
• Trainers teach us what to do for the right reasons, and
• actors perform their roles for the right reasons.
Yet, in coaching, we explore the right reasons; we test the assumptions
those right reasons are based upon. Through discovery, appreciative
inquiry as well as dialogue and conversation with another person, we
generate the right reasons through interaction.
Throughout this book, we will discover why coaching is not just another
program du jour. We will come to understand how coaching fits into the
modern day organizational structure. We will learn how to conduct
coaching interactions to develop awareness, purpose, competence and
well-being.
“I recommend that we account for behavior by understanding it as what
follows from the way the world is showing up for someone. In other
words, it is not events, communication, or stimuli that lead to
behavior, it is the interpretation an individual gives to the phenomenon
that leads to actions taken.” James Flaherty from COACHING:
Evoking Excellence in Others.
Clearly, right action is determined through interpretation of the
interaction of a variety of factors. This is not always defined in terms
of standards but often emergent according to interpretation or one’s
governing variables as Argyris might conclude. The role of coaching in
an organization and for the individual can facilitate interpretations
that are more generative for all concerned.
Generati
In a sense, people who practice this methodology as a lifestyle rather
than in a part of their lives evoke for me the term generati. I coined
this term a number of years ago to describe this very condition—people
who continuously create generative outcomes for others.
The term is derived from the forms of literati and digerati describing
conditions surrounding the literary and digital worlds. I offer this
coaching methodology to a new world. This new world is about right
action…is about creating generative conditions for all involved and…is
about a practice of understanding and acting in harmony with our goals,
our work, our communities and ourselves. It is a world of integration.
Please join me in the following chapters on a journey towards generati.
Coaching is a path you will find generative for you and your
organization.
Order the book:
1-877.901.COACH (2622)
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