High Technology Coaching

Personal technology has revolutionized business and working in general over the past twenty years. Personal computers, cell phones, the internet, personal organizers and other high technology devices have made the working world of the mid-1980’s and earlier seem like the Stone Age. These devices have improved efficiency, flexibility and the overall speed of interactions of all types. One area where technology has been a mixed success has been in the areas of leadership, supervision and coaching.

While the advent of new technologies and tools has made the best coaches even better, it has provided obstacles for inexperienced and less-effective coaches. There are several reasons for this.
- Emails rather than face-to-face coaching
- Voice mail messages rather than real time conversations
- Top down, spread sheet driven objectives rather mutually defined “SMART” objectives
- The advent of telecommuting and other work from home alternatives (which have significant upsides also)

Some tips for executives, managers, supervisors and other coaches operating in this high technology environment:
- Meet your people individually face-to-face at least quarterly. If you cannot travel to meet them, they should travel to meet you.
- Never put in an email or a voice mail what you can deliver either face-to-face or over the phone live. Follow it up with an e-mail or voice mail if necessary.
- Objectives should be more than a series of numbers from top down. They should be arrived at jointly and discussed face-to-face in an objective setting session. If not face to face, they can be handled on phone call or calls.
- Some people do great working from home away from their supervisor and peers. But other people need the direct interaction with their coach and with their co-workers. This depends on the job function, the individual and amount team versus individual contribution required for success. This must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

The combination of technology plus effective personal coaching can create an environment for individual and team success.

George Franks is the founder of Franks Consulting Group – a management consulting and leadership coaching firm. Visit:

www.franksconsultinggroup.com

Coaching Your Coach

Coaching Your Coach: How to Deal with a Boss

Coaching your coach or in other words dealing with your boss at work is one of the most challenging aspects of working life. People who do this well can often count on improved compensation, advancement and visibility to more senior leaders. Those who do not do this well often find themselves with limited if any raises, dead-end careers and little if no “face time” with senior leadership. What differentiates those who do this well from those who do it poorly? While there are many elements to the dynamics of dealing with your boss or coach, several are proposed here.

Do not:
Constantly use face time with your coach to ask what to do or how to do it.
Use time with you boss to talk only about you, your work and your career unless you have scheduled it in advance as a “career development session”. Limit these to a couple of times per year maximum.
Spend the time with you coach criticizing your company, organization, peers or subordinates. If you are asked about these topics be honest, concise and put it in the best possible terms.

Do:
Come prepared with an outline of what you want to talk about including a brief update on any major projects including quantifiable performance results.
Be prepared to propose what you can do to make you coach more successful and offer to assist in ways that will leverage your strengths and skills. This includes picking up additional projects that may have been assigned to your boss since your last meeting.
Listen more than you talk. Make constructive and specific recommendations. Do not guess. If you can assist with something but need more information, write it down and offer to follow up with the details in a specific period of time.
Optional: if you coach likes things in writing, follow-up the meeting or session with a summary of what you have committed to doing and by when. If this is not consistent with your coaches style, then within one business day, follow-up with a call if your on not co-located summarizing what you committed to doing and by when.

Following these suggestions in dealing with your coach can serve to make you more effective and can also serve to demonstrate to your boss that you are a person he can count on to make the most of their time and deliver consistently on important projects. Both are important to success and advancement in any organization.

George Franks is the founder of Franks Consulting Group – a management consulting and leadership coaching firm. Visit:

www.franksconsultinggroup.com

Crisis Management - A Team Approach to Addressing Business Problems

During the course of day-to-day business, only one thing can be expected. That is that problems how will arise. Some businesses hold individual managers responsible to resolve problems. Others address problems through teams of managers aligned either organizationally or functionally with the problem. And yet other businesses intentionally or unintentionally ignore problems until they are so impactful on business outcomes that they must be addressed in some manner. The latter usually requires additional resource due to the crisis nature of the problem. In that business problems are a given, there should be a consistent methodology for addressing problems as they arise. The purpose of this document is to summarize one of the most effective was to identify, address and resolve business problems.

Identifying business problems.

One of the greatest challenges in business is separating problems from the numerous daily issues, challenges, competitive pressures and change. Many if not most of these are part of the day-to-day and must be addressed by the individual managers with functional or organizational accountability in the area where they arise. This is not to minimize the importance of these. It is just that they must be acted upon by the individuals who have accountability and responsibility where they arise. There are other business problems that go beyond the accountability of the individual manager. Some of their characteristics are:
- They impact the revenue top line against the business plan
- They impact the cost and/or expense against the business plan
- They impact market share against what was targeted in the business plan
- They impact customer satisfaction against the measure in place
- They impact employee retention and/or satisfaction against the measure in place

While there may be business problems beyond these that need to be addressed by a team and the process outlined below, these are the key indicators externally and internally for the success of any business. Any deviation in any of these measures against the business plan or other internal metric is a candidate for action by a cross functional and/or cross organizational action team.

Step 1: IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM IN CLEAR, CONCISE LANGUAGE

Team to resolve the problem

Now that the problem has been identified and documented in clear, concise language, the next step is who can address the problem. Short of the Chairman or the CEO, who is the business owner for the outcome or achieving the committed business result? This needs to be defined clearly within the organization at the functional and organizational level. Once that individual has been identified, she must be empowered by a senior leader (CEO ideally) to own and resolve the problem. Along with this goes the charter to establish an action team to work the problem to resolution. The CEO (or other senior executive) needs to be clear about the timeframe for action. The problem owner must next reach within and outside their organization to assemble a team to address and resolve the problem. While this team may include members of organizations such as Finance, Marketing, Sales, Operations, Research and Development and Human Resources, the composition should be specific to the problem and not include more than one participant per organization or functional area. The members of the action team need to be committed to the project through their leadership and committed to a pre-agreed amount of their work time and project duration. While these may change at points during the project, they should be communicated up front.

Step 2: ASSEMBLE AN EMPOWERED TEAM TO RESOLVE THE PROBLEM

Initial Meeting

The action team must have an initial meeting for several purposes. First it should serve to communicate the problem to all participants. Secondly it should serve as an occasion for all the action team members to get to know one another. Thirdly, the timeline, expectations, and roles must be clearly outlined at the initial meeting. Finally, specific fact-finding assignments must be made during the initial meeting along with timeframes for reporting out information from the fact-finding. More information is better. While business instincts are important, facts serve to take emotion out of the exercise. Whether individual or small teams, clear assignments must be made with the expectation of how the information should be summarized or presented to the action team and when. Ideally, they should be in the form of a presentation with back-up details in advance of the next action team meeting to allow for detailed review prior to the next meeting.

Step 3: DO YOUR HOMEWORK

The Second Action Team Meeting

Action teams must work in compressed time frames to be most effective. Within a short period following the initial action team meeting and the completion of the assigned research, the team should reconvene, in an environment where they cannot be interrupted by any normal day-to-day issues. These should be either delegated or temporarily reassigned during the action team meeting to allow complete focus on the task at hand. The action team meeting should be structured as follows:
- Restatement of the business problem
- Review of the direction from the CEO including the timeframe for resolution
- Crisp presentations by each of the individuals or teams on their research topic
- Boarding (Post Its or large flip charts) the causes of the issue, actions to address the problem, other effects of those actions and good ideas and issues but unrelated to the problem at hand should be posted on a “parking lot”
- Vote on the issues and actions to identify the top three of each
- Assign a team to present each of the issues and a team to present each of the actions

Step 4: CLARIFY THE TOP THREE ISSUES AND RELATED TOP THREE ACTIONS

The Third Action Team Meeting

The action team should reconvene to present the top three issues and related top three actions. This could be the next day or the next week. It should not be more than two weeks after the Second Action Team meeting. The third action team meeting should be structured as follows:
- Review of the business problem and timeframe for resolution
- A crisp presentation by each of the sub team of their top (one of three) issues and related action (one of three)
- At the end of each there should be a rigorous question and answer period. The points should be boarded on a flip chart
- When the discussion of all three issues and actions have been completed and documented, their should be a vote among all participants of the dominant issue and action
- The dominant issue and action should be documented to insure clarity among all participants
- Each participant should speak to their role in addressing the issue; this should not be constrained by resource, budget or organizational contention
- The agreed upon issue and action including first step organizational and functional roles should be documented and reviewed with the entire action team
- A target for presenting the action team issue, action and accountabilities to the CEO or senior business leader should then be scheduled

Step 5: ALIGN ON A SINGLE ISSUE, SINGLE ACTION, FUNCTIONAL OWNERS

Present, Close and Act

The agreed upon issue, action and owners with accountabilities and timeframes must next be presented to the CEO or senior business leader. If the senior business leader agrees with the action team’s recommendations, the next step is to implement the action plan with specific objectives, owners and timeframes (metrics). If the senior business leader does not agree with the action team’s recommendations, the action team must either go back and do additional research and follow the subsequent steps or if additional research is not needed then the team should go back to step 3.

Step 6: ACT, MEASURE, CORRECT, ACT, MEASURE, CORRECT

During the execution of the action plan, the individual functions and organizations must perform the roles, actions and within the timeframes presented by the action team to and as approved by the CEO or the senior business leader. The action team does not own this, they must be owned by the functions and the organizations as part of day-to-day business. Otherwise it will be viewed as an action team issue and not a business issue. The timeframes, metrics and readouts to the CEO or senior executive by the overall business owner are essential to resolve the business problem.

George Franks is the founder of Franks Consulting Group – a management consulting and leadership coaching firm. Visit:

www.franksconsultinggroup.com