22


Management Services Spring 2012


Don’t misunderstand me, it is a great way to get people talking about things and stimulates some excitement, but does it change anything in the longer term? How can the initial ‘spark’ be sustained? A smaller scale coaching intervention, targeting key and pivotal people to work on projects that deliver, is now the growing norm for driving organisational and effective change.


Summary on ROI training issues vs leadership-coaching Simply stated, coaching can be shaped to achieve very precise changes in behaviour. Coaching addresses behaviour change more effectively than training.


I believe ‘until behaviour changes, nothing changes’ – whether it be leadership, customer focus, matrix management or the post- acquisition integration. Consider the benefi ts to your organisation of adapting a radical coaching intervention to replace some of the other organisational change strategies.


As a pilot project, it is easily possible to demonstrate the benefi ts and the ‘returns’ that can accrue to your enterprise very quickly. Short focused inputs, working closely with key staff, could instantly impact your performance as an organisation. Coaching means ‘to make easy’ what organisations should be


committing to install and implement the changes that will equip them to operate at a higher level of functioning and performance.


Using ‘impact studies’ based on personal progression and achievement diaries, we can create signifi cant improvement in a short period of time, without burdening the organisation with a huge commitment in time or money and it is tailored precisely to the presenting problems. Organisations can avoid the huge costs and wasted time associated with ‘off site’ training, such as the costs of travel and hotel accommodation, as well as numerous logistical and scheduling issues to cover for staff attending programmes.


Reviewing progress This is the ROI aspect of the coaching process. We should be aware of how well changes in behaviour have measured up to the outcomes desired. There may come a time when these changes are evaluated to illustrate the impact of the coaching intervention on business performance. If the coach cannot illustrate a direct and causal relationship between intervention and improvement, they have lost control of the process. This is a major reason


why, in the early days, coaching was seen purely as an ‘unstructured’, ‘getting to know you’ and ‘touchy feely’ intervention. Now, with


robust coaching methods, that is a relic in the past. Where coaching is tangible and delivers ROI is where it is taken seriously by businesses. Coaches who work on ‘hard’ as well as ‘soft’ issues will be more valued in most business communities.


Following a pilot project when we are able to demonstrate that a 4:1 ROI was the outcome to expect with a North American manufacturing facility, the VP of strategic manufacturing became committed to a long-term programme for all US plants that committed to collaborate in the process. The European arm of that business was already committed to a similar coaching process, based on culture change with fi rm deliverables presented to the European board by the fi rst 20 participants who went through the initial coaching programme.


After demonstrating positive value, we repeated the process with an additional 80 participants of the most senior staff from the UK, Germany, Italy and France. Similarly, another client, a Scottish-owned bank, experienced the same outcome, but a higher return, because we focused on reducing the costs of failure and non-conformance. We concentrated on a culture-change process, based upon coaching senior teams on cross-functional projects.


Coaching


The returns in organisational and fi nancial terms far exceeded the cost of internally and externally funding and resourcing the programme.


Coaching for all If an organisation has the resources to coach all its staff, undertaking that is a very effective, effi cient and speedy way to tailor learning and development – and deliver the operational results behind the thrust of business leaders. Doing this, an organisation committing itself to becoming a learning organisation should also commit itself to developing its own change agent business coaches. Working through learning and development strategies, most organisations can acquire the internal capability to drive change and make learning and coaching the sustainable culture.


Directive versus non-directive strategies Coaching in organisational change may vary from directive to non-directive. Directive coaching is a process that many ‘old school’ purists back away from, suggesting that coaching is strictly for personal development. I disagree – coaching should be directly linked to achieving organisational and personal improvement. There is a role for the directive approach when groups of staff need specifi c advice, often when the organisation is going through


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48