Using Coaching to Support Business Agility

Coaching is set to take a bigger role in the movement to transform the world’s businesses to ever more Agile ways of working. Few now question that business agility is a critical component for the future of today’s organisations. A Forbes Insight Survey reported that ‘83% of those surveyed cite an Agile mindset/flexibility as the most important characteristic of today’s CXO’[i]. HBR predicts ‘three-quarters of today’s S&P 500 will be replaced by 2027’[ii].

We don’t need to look far for evidence that change is fast. Artificial intelligence, and digital technology generally, are transforming our world. We need to get better at differentiating ourselves from machine-based intelligence, to do those things that only humans can do. In this environment, people that cling to past ways of working, and fail to evolve and innovate, are likely to be left behind. Coaching is a key component for Agile transformation at all levels – providing support for behaviour change, innovation and ideas generation, and a style of leadership that empowers individuals, teams and organisations to strive within a growth mindset. 

Business as Transformation not Transaction

Traditionally, business was about the exchange of goods and services for profit. At one level it still is, but organisations now need to look beyond the transactions themselves to engage their employees, their stakeholders and their target audiences in a different way. Successful organisations are unleashing the full potential of their workforce to sustain innovation, growth and development, by focusing on excellence in skills such as communication, leadership and relationship building. 

The 2014 book ‘Firms of Endearment'[iii] made it clear that when commercial organisations move from a materialistic viewpoint to one where employees, customers, leaders and stakeholders are all aligned around shared values and purpose, then profit will follow – even though it may not be the primary motivation. The truth is

it is our values that drive our motivations and our priorities.

The Firms of Endearment research identified the companies ‘most loved by their stakeholders’, and then found that these massively outperformed the S&P 500 ‘by huge margins, over ten, five, and three-year time horizons. The public Firms of Endearment returned 1026% for investors compared to 122% for the S&P 500’ – an 8 to 1 ratio.

Alongside this has been the emergence of Agile ways of working. Starting with the Manifesto for Agile Software Development[iv] in 2001, the influence of this collaborative way of working has now spread well beyond IT and we hear about Agile HR, Agile Leadership, Agile Culture, Agile Marketing, Agile Sales. These all share a focus on being adaptive and responsive, working in manageable chunks, avoiding bureaucracy and obstructive hierarchy, enabling and empowering through leadership style, and communicating across boundaries. Whether or not the ‘Agile’ prefix is used, these practices are increasingly proving to be the route to business success through coaching behaviours that are both effective and appropriate amidst fast and unpredictable change.

An Agile approach works because it taps into what makes human beings tick. Daniel Pink[v]identified autonomy, mastery, and purpose as core elements of motivation. These are what make people really engage, become absorbed in their work, and committed to producing the best possible results. In Agile working, autonomy around a shared purpose is key. Agile teams are respected to make the decisions that they are competent to make. After all, they are closest to the problems they are trying to solve, and where change is fast, there simply isn’t time to keep referring up the hierarchy for approvals. People need to be trusted, targeting mastery, embracing a growth mindset, developing and learning. Agile working is associated with strong processes, tools and frameworks that contribute to its efficiency. Yet, without behaviour change, these are ultimately not enough to produce the best improvements and results. As Stephen Denning[vi]says in ‘The Age of Agile’, “when people have an Agile mindset, it hardly matters what tools, processes and practices they are using. The mindset makes things come out right. In the end, Agile is a mindset.” Processes rarely change mindsets, but quality coaching and leadership is designed to do just that.

We need to free up our thinking from reverting to comfortable well-worn paths, and coaching is the mechanism by which this can be achieved. The business environment we work is fluid and unpredictable. Think about where competition comes from. Marketers used to confidently create competitor analysis maps including organisations that did the same things as they did. Yet, Uber, Amazon, Spotify, Air BnB – all these companies provided value in a completely new way, competing through delivery platform rather than product. It’s not so much what we know that will decide whether we succeed, but how we think and innovate.

The Importance of Values

The way we think is primarily driven by our values, which in turn drive our behaviour – and behaviour impacts how effectively strategy is delivered. Research such as the Deloitte Millennials Survey[vii] confirms that people now expect the workplace to align to their values and to deliver meaning and purpose to their lives. In the same way, we know that project teams work best where they are aligned behind shared purpose and values. 

Too often values are left out of the business equation, and yet when a skilled coach elicits the core values that are influencing people and teams, or helps to translate corporate values into daily behaviours, then the impact can be phenomenal. When we acknowledge the values that underpin our decisions, we can see where and how change may be needed. Once we know our values, we can refer to them to check our choices and achieve greater confidence in our direction. As a personal example, my values include simplicity, which sits very well with a commitment to being, and doing, Agile. 

Coaching surfaces values, and helps people appreciate the difference between facts, beliefs and their values. This is really helpful for Agile working where the focus needs to be firmly on real evidence – not opinion and beliefs – and where understanding values provides the bedrock for clear communication, helping to overcome assumptions and damaging misinterpretations. 

Aligning Values for Authenticity

It’s almost impossible to over-estimate the impact that the Internet has had on our world. It’s difficult now to put ourselves back in that place, where paper dictionaries and directories were the sole points of reference and where our information about products and services were generally what was published by the companies themselves. It’s different now. We exist amidst a web of interconnected online communities where knowledge is freely shared. Marketers know now that the customer’s views have more influence than the official messaging of the organisation. Marketing is more than ever about communication, about developing genuine relationships with all target audiences, influencing groups, customers and stakeholders. Organisations are unlikely to succeed if their marketing does not align to the values of their prospect base. When organisations’ actions don’t back up what they say are their values, their authority and the trust of their customer base will be damaged. Marketers need to understand their audiences, and support them to make buying decisions that are right for their situation. As Jeff Lipsius says in ‘Selling to the Point’[viii] the challenge is to ensure people have a good buying experience, rather than that the sales person has a good selling experience. It’s the same for marketing, it should always be about how the communication is received and its impact, rather than how it is evaluated in the organisation. Excellent coaches and leaders encourage the ability to look at challenges through different lenses and perspectives, to step into the shoes of others. This builds the skills needed to collaborate more effectively with the customer, to understand their challenges and support the decisions that will give them the value they are looking for. Authenticity is critical to your brand. Organisations targeting business agility need to work transparently and authentically, generating the trust on which effective innovation and brand reputation depends. 

Being Comfortable with Uncertainty

It’s difficult to be comfortable with uncertainty. Insights from neuroscience confirm that our brains yearn for stability and control. In other words, we don’t like to be controlled but we do like to control others. In business we tend to prefer to do what was done last time because there’s already a defined path to follow. We like processes, and yet to achieve business agility we need to continue to question them. 

Agile working offers frameworks that help us to stay effective amidst uncertainty. Business agility involves feeling able to experiment without a fear of failure, and developing cultures of psychological safety where everyone is free to contribute ideas backed by their full creativity. Most great innovations result from a pile of ‘failures’. Excellent graphic designers know that clients sometimes undervalue their efforts because they only see the final creations on the concepts board, and not all the iterations that have been tried, tested, and ended up in the bin. 

Business agility depends on leaders and employees being comfortable with experimenting, even though the end result is uncertain. It depends on the ability to apply appropriate questions to what is known about ‘the here and now’, to better understand how to develop towards something completely new. Coaching focuses on supporting people through that uncertainty. Coaches do not provide the ‘answers’ but ask the questions that are needed to add clarity to a Goal, deepen understanding of Reality, identify Options and what Will be done to measurably move forward. Coaches know this as the GROW model, and it works well within an Agile approach to transformation. The success of Agile working depends on people feeling confident enough to make strong choices – ‘while telling negates choice, disempowers, limits potential, and demotivates, coaching does the opposite.’[ix]

Fostering Employee Engagement

Gallup has reported that 87% of employees worldwide are not engaged at work and, in keeping with the Firms of Endearment research, find that companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147% in earnings per share[x]. More simply, happy people that are interested in their work consistently achieve higher performance. 

Neuroscientists have found that the human brain responds to social hurt the same as physical hurt. We need to pay attention to what is happening with our people and in our teams. We can only change what we are aware of, and purposeful interactions, communication and behaviour are the foundation for a corporate culture that drives strategic success. It is the behaviour of people in our organisations will define the brand for prospects and customers. 

Coaching has a clear role to play in aligning behaviour and action to purpose and intention. Coaching questions improve collaboration, meaningful goal setting, delegating, accountability and responsibility. They surface the insights and ‘Aha moments’ that close the strategy reality gap and shape pragmatic steps forward towards success. 

Neuroleadership expert David Rock’s SCARF model provides a valuable key to the triggers that can loosen employee engagement. Think back on a workplace situation that has been painful, frustrating or has deeply bothered you. One or more of these five domains of experience will have been impacted. 

You can’t deliver the full potential of your strategy without paying attention to the culture that will drive it. 

The Power of Questions

Coaching questions can be designed to create doubt, forcing someone to think about something they had previously taken for granted, assumed or accepted. This opens up the space for innovation to be possible. Sir John Whitmore’s, ‘Coaching for Performance’ asks which triggers more value – the statement ‘The flowers out there are red’ or ‘What colour are the flowers?'

This illustrates the difference between ‘telling’ in command and control leadership, and a more Agile approach which breaks down command hierarchies to allow organisations to benefit from the full thinking potential of their employees. The job of leaders and coaches is to release thought processes, to change thoughts into practices, and facilitate the development of new possibilities. Traditional hierarchies embed dependence, with lower ranks being dependent on the knowledge and approval of the higher ones. By building up the self-belief of every employee, leaders give up control and the need to feed a belief in their superior abilities. Worrying about how we look to our peers and reports, and putting energy into ‘looking professional’, is a waste of resources. We don't have time for what has been referred to as ‘the second job’. When leaders genuinely empower their people and their teams through a coaching style of leadership, they can be happily surprised by the positive impact it has on them, when people are no longer soaking up their energies by expecting them to provide all the answers. 

To be sustainable, organisations need to invest in organisational culture and the behaviour of their people; knowledge is not the core of success and ‘expertise’. When change is fast, pervasive and threatens to be overwhelming what’s needed is adaptability, resilience and perhaps above all focus. The ability to see the wood within the trees, and prioritise effectively to maintain growth, productivity and success. Humans are social animals and, however brilliant we are, we need other people. Leaders and coaches can surface new perspectives and keep insights aligned with achievable goals, closing the strategy reality gap and opening up fresh opportunity. It’s easy to get caught up with busyness, and feel really productive, but being busy doesn’t get you where you need to go – focus and alignment against values and goals does that. 

If you'd like to build agility in your organisation, or you would like support to work in a more Agile way, let’s chat. 

[i]https://www.forbes.com/sites/insights-scrumalliance/2018/10/18/3-steps-for-building-an-agile-friendly-c-suite/#787ab477ac73

[ii]https://www.performanceconsultants.com/facing-up-to-the-cultural-challenge-how-organizations-are-risking-their-future

[iii]https://www.firmsofendearment.com

[iv]https://agilemanifesto.org

[v]https://www.danpink.com/drive./

[vi]https://www.stevedenning.com/site/Default.aspx

[vii]https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/2016-millennialsurvey.html

[viii]https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Point-Because-Information-Demands/dp/0996475907

[ix]Coaching for Performance, Sir John Whitmore, 2017

[x]https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236495/worldwide-employee-engagement-crisis.aspx