The why and how of an effective coaching program

The Why

Today's world economy is a lot about Dynamic Capability: the capacity for organizations to respond to changes in the market, fast. This requires more and faster changes within the organizations, which in turn impacts the way people do their work. Organizational changes can cause anxiety and uncertainty. Some of that can be addressed through training, but my experience from implementation projects is that training is barely enough to teach people what the buttons do. A phrase I've heard a lot during product training is "We'll figure it out once we're working with sytem". Sounds familiar?

And once the project is closed and the consultants have left, the reality of the daily work pressure takes over. That's when change needs to take hold, but people tend to fall back on old habits almost automatically. The higher the pressure, the safer old habits feel. Resistance increases. It's usually the line managers who are made responsible for ensuring that their teams work according to the new procedures using the new tools. But change is just as hard (and as scary) for them.

Bottom line, it takes time to change and the longer it takes, the longer it takes to achieve the expected ROI... if achieved at all.

This is why I believe that coaching can make a real difference. When a team has someone on the workfloor with them, who guides and supports them as they adjust to the change, will make for a more successful change on an individual level while dramatically shortening the time it takes to achieve change. Especially for a big change, such as the implementation of a Knowledge Management methodology like Knowledge-Centered Services (KCS*), having a coaching program in place has proven to be a vital instrument for success.

The How

If you're looking to set up a coaching program, follow these four steps.

Step one: Select your coaches

A good coach is someone who understands the new processes and has the right people skills. Someone who is trusted by the other members of the team. More often than not, this person is not the team manager. Instead, identify and select potential coaches from the people on the workfloor. This is not an easy task, which is why an Organizational Network Analysis can be very useful.

Step two: Train your coaches

Training will help your potential coaches become aware of their influencing skills, making them more effective.

Step three: Allocate time for your coaches to coach

How much time you allocate for your coaches to perform their role depends entirely on your specific situation. But as a rule, coaching should always remain a part-time role and the coaches should always remain part of the teams on the workfloor.

Step four: coach your coaches

They need coaching too!

*KCS is a Service Mark of the Consortium for Service Innovation.
http://www.serviceinnovation.org