My favourite coaching tools: SMART Acronym Another Update

What the heck!? The SMART acronym again?

SMART - 3rd Time Lucky?

I thought I had all this simple stuff figured out. By 2012 I was willing to post my original thoughts and approach to SMART Goals/Objectives in the original post: http://change-challenge.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-favourite-coaching-tools-smart.html. It had evolved from my own practice as a delivery team lead, management student, and, later on, my first 2 years of agile training classes, coaching individuals and teams, and supporting departments through successful transformations.

Through 2016-2017, after supporting more transformations and agile adoptions with much more variety I realised some useful nuances to this multi-purpose tool had emerged by working with it in so many different ways. So I put out my update - http://change-challenge.blogspot.com/2017/10/my-latest-smart-acronym-update.html and thought "that's done now!".

Silly me. When is learning ever done? And so it was again. Late in 2018 I was on a totally non-agile, non-software, non-management, non-"normal" experiential psychology course. As we approached the end of the course we were asked to come up with 1 (I really like 1, and only 1, "there can be only 1!") SMART objective to help us take the next 1-2-3 steps after the course ended.

Whilst I was considering my objective, something else clicked into place for me that I'd been overlooking. Well 2 things actually. :-)

1, The confidence-risk level could be assessed with the "A" for "How Achievable?".
2, The alignment to purpose/direction/bigger picture could be assessed with the "R" for "Really-make-a-difference-in-the-direction-we-are-going?".

The A

An achievableness on a scale of 1-5, from improbable to highly probable ... we get a sense of how much risk the individual, team or group is willing to tolerate/try move through. Often it's okay (great!) to "try" for an easy win with a 4-5 level of confidence. Sometimes it is better, for learning or even to save the company, to try for something harder to do (with a friend, coach or mentor especially to support!) in the 2-3 range. So many "it depends", so little time to elaborate experiences here! :)

The quantification of achievableness is important when considering the alignment of this objective/goal to the purpose of the individual, team or group. Sometimes we could do the easy thing which is highly certain, we are confident in our capability to achieve it, and it will have no,  negligible or insufficient impact on achieving our purpose.

Such highly certain successful outcomes could be a waste of the one thing we always run out of, that no money or anything else in this world can get more of: time.

Using the R to confirm that we're aligned with purpose is really useful. Yet being aligned with purpose could expose us to a context, circumstance, super-ego, mindset or organisation "change anti-bodies" - "historical baggage" often - that do not really make it easy for us to align our efforts to our purpose and pursue that wholeheartedly. And it's good to reflect on this before, during and after - there is so much growth possible by understanding this "stuff" deeply!

The R

Reality. Realisation. Becoming real. That which is real. Turning deep desires (especially one's purpose) described by abstract thoughts or ideas into abstract words and then into "real world". Something really shifted in me that day in 2018, and I don't know why or what the final effect will be. Essentially it was around my previous interpretation of "responsible person assigned".

I really believe something better can be done with the acronym here. I have seen "realistic" in many places in the past - as in "the goal/objective is achievable and realistic". Or "actionable and realistic".

SMART Objectives Aligned To Team or Individual Purpose Creates A Desirable Tension Around Potential Which Then Unleashes Huge "Action" Energy To Achieve The Change In The Real World

What shifted for me that moment was that it could be better used as "really aligned to purpose". This is imho much stronger / more energetic / more focussed. For any objective or goal. And if its a tough thing to change, we absolutely need to believe we're going through the tough bit to get to a better place, else we will give up. And that defeatedness because of giving up can be a really worse place to land up.

With Specificness (as per my 2017 SMART update), it's easy to include the responsible person there as an attribute/quality that makes the change even more Specific. Similarly with tight "Measured by" criterion set that matches that Specificness.

OKR's (Objective, Key-Results) try to approach this slightly differently. But there is overlap that I guess I will draw out in the future when my thoughts and experiences are clearer.

Einstein apparently said something along the lines of - given an hour to solve a problem he'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem [in detail, in depth, from multiple perspectives, etc] and 5 minutes attempting to solve it. That way you'd be more certain which part of the problem your solution addresses well or not as well, and what other potential things you could change or try with another attempt later if need be. The solution matches the problem. Often - because it is in our nature, society and expectations from others - we solutionise too quickly and what we come up with may be good, but misses the original problem. A great shot that misses the target...is just a great shot. Same time, same cost, same effort. Miss. Absolutely useless in the context that mattered before the shot was taken.

Thankyou! As always happy to hear your thoughts on the above! Be careful out there, AND don't be too serious - fun provides a lot of goodwill and positive energy to achieve goals!

How to get it done in organisations

I was attending a course during 2016. Attending were a whole bunch of people from many different walks of life, and many different organisation experiences and levels.

Out of the blue, one of my fellow trainees was explaining how they, in their role of working with many organisations on big business-to-business transactions, had discovered a very useful approach to getting things done in their own organisation, as well as client organisations.

"Want something done? Give it to a busy person"

This statement about "how to get it done" in large organisations drew quite a negative reaction from within me.

I realised the statement was right and wrong at the same time.

Busy people have figured out ways to give and to create more value to the organisation - by being of good service, they are asked to do more and more. They figure out ways to do more and more - usually alternative work practices that make them more streamlined / efficient. They become extremely knowledgeable across the whole organisation - knowing who's who, and who to go to directly and for what. Also importantly, they know which avenues to not even bother to try - saving everyone time and frustration.

So...the statement still makes me feel a bit ill, but I also recognise the truth in it. Many organisations I have worked within are literally functioning mostly as a result of these very busy network nodes.

For managers and leaders - look after your ever-busy people - they are busy keeping things moving in the right direction. You may not know what keeps them so busy - but perhaps that's where a little more curiosity and study will be quite revealing!

Agile In Four Or 4 words

I've been heavily reflecting on last week's post agile in 3 words and I'm not happy enough with it.

So this "Agile In 4 Words" is a response to that previous thought - to bring in a previous previous thought I captured in this older post Open question how.

I think the shortest summary to what is agile - other than "collaborative lightweight working practices" that means many different abstract things to many different people I've tried it on...and gotten nowhere with, is actually:

"How can I help?"

This one induces in the person asking out loud or silently to themselves the team working principles, the proaction, the learning, and more. That lovely "how?" question really opens things up more for everyone!

Especially in response to my earlier attempt "Can I help?" - a simple "No" would stop anyone in their tracks. And that "No" is to be expected when people are massively in a state of focus and don't want any interruptions.

The "simple" introduction of the "How" makes this an engaging question that any team member can get creative with by themselves and come up with more creative suggestions - even innovative practice improvements!

How do you think this is better or worse than the earlier version? Or...indeed..."How can you help?" :-)

Agile In 4 Words - How Can I Help?

Thankyou for supporting!

Agile In Three Or 3 Words

How many times have I heard the following from new clients and other coaches telling stories about their "difficult" clients? That's why I crafted this post!

Agile In 3 Words Is Easy

Actually explaining agile quickly, succinctly and simply for anyone, or any team or any organisation of any size is really easy, if you do the work (inspired by Byron Katie). It's simply you, and everyone in your organisation, and every supplier, client, consultant, advisor, regulator and customer around your organisation offering really often:

"Can I help?"

For agile in 3 words it is as simple as this! The implication is that everyone proacts to help each other all the time with everything from making tea to delivering the most complex system requiring 100's of people interlocking and aligning.

As an agile coach one of the things I look/listen out for when assessing the agile fluency of an organisation is how many times I hear the above line, and especially its followup which is highly noticeable in environments where there is a great deal of proaction - namely:

"Thank you!"

Now, go do the work! Thankyou for reading and supporting! :-)

My favourite coaching tools: Free online Kolb Learning Styles Assessment

Caveats:
As always when dealing with any kind of model that helps us communicate and understand the abstract world of our minds, our existence and relationships with each other, nicely summarised by George EP Box: "all models are wrong, some are useful".

This is a free assessment, and there are several others that you can freely download. I liked this one as it is a "1 stop shop" document that you print out, fill out, score quickly on the reporting sheet, and finally receive additional insights at the end. And anyone can complete this simply and quickly. 

Required:
Internet access
Printer and 8 pages
Quiet space
10-15 minutes

Step 1:
Give the link or 8 page print-out to the coachee: Kolb Questionnaire. Again I think the best time to do the assessment is in the morning, before work really starts.

Step 2:
When the assessment is complete, the coachee and you will have the coachee's 4 Kolb styles - Activist, Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist allocated to very strong preference, strong preference, moderate preference, low preference or very low preference.

You now have material you can use to support the coaching goals and plans where learning is required. You also have the approach you need when explaining concepts to the coachee - a real time saver and much more enjoyable experience for you and the coachee as compared to approaching from the worst angle.

Personally, once I realised what my preferred/natural Kolb learning approach was, I realised how I could learn better and more quickly in the same amount of time.

The future no longer belongs to those who learn the fastest. The future now belongs to those who learn the right things the fastest. Kolb learning styles assessment is just another practical tool to help me and my coachees discover their best learning method, and give us some "Slack" to identify what are the right things. Really useful stuff!

My favourite coaching tools: Open Question How

I've been reflecting on a multitude of interactions over a number of years trying to improve my speech metaphors, better questions, less leading and less inference.

Along the way, learning about the simple Open Questions / Closed Questions model used a great deal by Business Analysts, as well as facilitators of new ideas and group consensus.

Open Questions are divergent - they cause the person asked to provide new insights from their own subjective experience or beliefs. Typically these are the Where, What, When, Who, How. And not the Why as it is too aggressive for the recipient.

Closed Questions are convergent - they cause the person asked to move forward with their ideas or their decisions. Typically these are the Yes or No, This or That.

Along the way I noticed is that most/all "Why?" questions can (and should) be reframed with the other Where, What, When, Who and How questions.

Further along the way I noticed that with a bit more effort most/all Where, What, When, and Who questions can be rephrased with How. And based on some stakeholders feedback, that's a very good idea as it seemed to unlock many more options and more possibilities in people's minds.

For Example:

• Why did you do that? Becomes
• What did you hope to achieve by doing that? Becomes
• How did you think it would turn out, and how did it turn out?

• Why do you think we should speak to xyz? Becomes
• What do you think we could learn from speaking to xyz? Becomes
• How does speaking to xyz help us?

There are 2 books which have been particularly useful to me, and I am sure there are multitudes others. "Metaphors We Live By" by George Lackoff and Mark Johnson, and "Steps to an Ecology of Mind" by Gregory Bateson - but more on these later! 

My latest saying - You Are The Subject Of Your Life Story

You are the subject of your life story.

It's been inspired by Roger Evans' recently published "5DL - Five Dimensions of Leadership", available from Creative Leadership Consultants.

The actual piece that Roger describes this one-liner in is on page 93 in the chapter "1DL: The Ability to Self-Reflect"

"So as we consciously stop and reflect so we begin to realise that we are actually the subject of our thoughts and feelings rather than being the victim or object of ‘what’s out there’. This is for many such a powerful insight!

Consequently, if we are the subject of these thoughts feelings/emotions and behaviours, then the possibility exists that we can consciously control and potentially change them if we choose to do so. It means that we can begin to control our thoughts feelings and behaviours.22" 

Every sentence, thought, image, piece of music, feeling, etc that occurs to you or appears to you in your mind's eye - it is all about you. Pay attention, grow your self-awareness, take control over your mindsets and from there control your life!