My favourite coaching tools: The Mindset Works Online Mindset Assessment

Caveats:

A reminder that all my favourite coaching tools - free, online, or other - need to be applied with the sensible cautionary advice from statistician George EP Box: "all models are wrong but some are useful". Remember also that this is about "the other" and the other's perception - not you and not your perceptions! 

Some time after I posted http://change-challenge.blogspot.com/2017/03/my-favourite-coaching-tools-mindset.html a friend of mine put me onto this fantastic Ted talk by Eduardo Briceno during 2017. Since then I have only looked forward!

I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone to watch - more than once! How To Get Better At The Things You Care About packs a number of important truths and is well researched. 

Upon researching Eduardo Briceno a little more over the months after first watching this talk, I discovered his company Mindset Works, and their online mindset assessment tool: What's My Mindset? (amongst other good things like the courses they give, and their blog site).

And it's as easy and simple as that for this one - 8 questions later there is an easy to understand assessment and some advice to follow!

But why bother? Well...those with open and growth mindsets appear to be living happier and more fulfilling lives, and accomplishing more at work. It seems that's quite important given the speed of the changes we're experiencing, as well as the quantity of changes. Both appear to still be rising exponentially.
For extra insights into how mindsets work, and how to work with them, of all the books I have read so far, this one has 2 excellent chapters on the subject, as well as several other excellent chapters!

The Creative Manager (we could all do with one, work with one, or be one!)

My favourite coaching tools: SMART Acronym Update

So I've been using SMART/S.M.A.R.T. for quite a while (http://change-challenge.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-favourite-coaching-tools-smart.html) to help everyone understand the specific Task / Action / Goal / Objective clearly, so that success can be pursued by several people committed to achieving it together!

SMART Acronym Updated!

And along the way, I've come across Tom Gilb, and his 4 foundation rules for improving Specification Quality:

1. Every word, phrase, sentence and paragraph is clear to intended readers (RB: and lowest common denominator MUST be considered here: the newly joined member of the team)
2. Every word, phrase, sentence and paragraph is unambiguous (RB: so a glossary is a darn good idea, especially in abstract knowledge work, aka software delivery; note glossaries / data definitions / configuration libraries were a big thing in software since the 1960's at least)
3. All qualities are quantified (RB: so not faster/cheaper/better/blah...instead: Unit of Measure clearly defined, the meter clearly defined, the current state or measurement clearly noted, and then the future state survival and/or target and/or stretch and/or wish thresholds are expressed)
4. No solution language unless the document is specifying the solution (RB: keep the language in the problem domain/space ie common business layman's terminology)

And through Tom's teaching, Lord Kelvin's "To Measure Is To Know".

Thinking about all the lessons learned, and helping many individuals and teams move towards their desired future states, I've been modifying the SMART I use to mean the following these days:

    S - Specific (following Tom Gilb's #1 and #2 rules)

    M - Measured By (following Tom Gilb's #3 rule)

    A - Achievable (as a sanity check of the S&M against the R and T coming soon)

    R - Responsible person to agitate that this SMART is delivered is <...> (a single person is a must, if only to remind those who have to do the work, or even better, the person who is going to get the Task / Action / Story / Work Done!)

    T - Timebound on or before  

For Retrospectives

If this is a SMART Action that a team is generating from their Sprint or other Retrospective, as facilitator I encourage the Timebound to be on or before the next Retrospective (which the team commits to knowing and understanding what dd-mmm-yyyy that is!)

For Management Tactical or Strategic Objectives

Again the management team commits to the next planning date dd-mmm-yyyy for the Timebound element and we block out the calendars to ensure that happens! Nothing drains morale and energy than constant slipping of important - especially Strategically agreed important - Tasks/Actions/Objectives.

For Individuals or Delivery/Product Teams I'm Coaching

Exactly the same as Retrospectives or Management: we're all talking about changing the Current Reality to the Future Reality. Usually though, individuals are setting target states for the end of the current or next month - ie shorter windows in which to achieve shifts of consciousness and/or behaviours that impact or lead to the outcome they're trying to achieve.

Thankyou for supporting! Let me know how you do!