Has Coaching Gone For a Burton?

Photo by Julie Elliott-Abshire

Finally the FA in England has given the go-ahead for their Academy at Burton.  But what will they be doing there?  I have read that the purpose of the Academy is to train and develop coaching capability, particularly at grass roots level.  This will in turn give youngsters the technical skills the England team is currently so desperately short of.  Many commentators have said that these skills need developing at an early age and by the age of 21 it’s already too late.

So how good is the coaching right now?  Not good enough and certainly not in sufficient depth to develop the undoubted talent that exists right across the country.

And what happens to those young talented footballers?  How do they learn, if not from good coaching.  The few English players that make it to the biggest stage do so in clubs where they have the opportunity to learn from the best players in the world.  However only a small percentage get the chance as instant results are needed and too often the result is a player fails to reach their full potential because they do not get the opportunity to test themselves at the highest level.

So what’s happening in your own business?  How do you use coaching?  Maybe you don’t use coaching at all or perhaps only as a  performance management tool – a way of getting people back on track.  If you don’t use coaching or only in limited cases then you are missing out on a massive opportunity to increase bottom line results.

If you see coaching as a cost effective development strategy to improve performance and build a committed, highly engaged and productive workforce, where people have the opportunity to build a career; then how good is your coaching capability? 

If there are insufficient coaching skills amongst your managers, or your managers do not provide a challenging yet supportive environment, your own staff will not fulfil their potential.  That is a cost to the business on so many levels, including productivity, retention and recruitment.

I’ve just developed a coaching development programme accredited by the Institute of Leadership and Development.  I believe that when coaching is done well it is one of he best and most cost effective ways of improve performance and results.  Drop me a line if you’d like to know more.

Measuring and Valuing Talent

Photo by Jonathan Ruchti www.sxc.hu

Dr Bill Gerrard is an international authority on sports finance. He has developed player transfer and wage valuation systems for use in the football industry including squad valuations for various football clubs. He has written widely published academic papers on a number of topics - interestingly on player transfer market, measuring player quality and coaching efficiency. 

What struck me more than anything were the comparisons with the way player talent is measured and valued in sport and what happens in business with talent acquisition, development and management.

Dr Gerrard highlights the difference between sports such as cricket and the various codes of football (soccer, rugby).  Cricket, Dr Gerrard contends, is more easily measured due to the clearly differentiated specialisms, e.g. batting and bowling where performance is easily measured.  What is more difficult, is measuring individual performance in invasion sports such as football where the goal (J) is to move an object from one end of a playing field to the other.  Individual contributions in this arena are far more difficult to value; and Dr Gerrard has spent several years developing a system that can measure and value player contribution.

Dr Gerrard has worked with top football and rugby clubs in England, Scotland and overseas, using his system to measure contribution and identify improvements.  Part of the philosophy is to focus on the positive and he has found that teams that focus on the positives perform significantly higher than those who focus on failure.  These high performing teams use failure as an opportunity, learning far more quickly and effectively.  Their cost ratios are also far better.  For example, one team consistently had top 5 finishes, but the costs of achieving the result were more than 50% lower than the teams above.  As professional sport is also a commercial business Returns on investment are a key consideration.

In the same way, we also use a system developed over many years to measure and value individual performance in organisations.  Our model is called the Four stages of Contribution and was developed at Harvard University.  It is now used by successful organisations worldwide to develop and retain high performing talent at every level.  The four Stages model has a lot in common with Dr Gerrard’s approach to developing sporting talent – great minds clearly think alike!  If you would like to know more about how you can measure and develop talent and improve performance in your organisation, I’d be pleased to explain the concepts and approach to you.  Droop me a line and I’ll send you some information.

Work More Effectively - Think Like a Nomad

Thousands of years ago mankind lived as nomads.  Then came civilisation, agriculture, settlements and life changed forever.  The same thing is happening to the Bushmen of the Kalahari as they give up their nomadic lifestyle for one of permanent settlements.  Life has changed radically for them too; and not necessarily for the best.

For nomads, the emphasis is on social groups and relationships, sharing knowledge, moving with the seasons in search of food and shared with everyone.  In settled communities, social groups become leadership structures, knowledge and wealth are acquired and accumulated individually, food is stored for personal rather than for group use. I won’t go into sanitation, but have you see the size of our sewers? Spencer Wells, a geneticist and anthropologist documented all of this in his book Pandora’s Seed: The Unforeseen Consequences of Civilisation.

So what has that go to do with organisational life?  Well, networking is a highly valued activity – look at the rise of Facebook and LinkedIn as business tools. 

The most effective people in organisations are those that develop and work through others – they coach and mentor as a way of getting things done.  They share their thoughts, ideas, knowledge and expertise.  Their networks extend far beyond the walls of their organisation and its clients. 

So, get out of your office, department, division, business.  Meet new colleagues and old customers.  Share your experience, your ideas and search out new pastures, there are plenty to be found even with people and places you thought you knew.

Let your thoughts wander beyond the self-imposed restriction of civilisation.  Think like a nomad!

Even in the Darkest Moments

Whilst doing something completely unrelated I came across a true story that moved me. It also reminds me that no matter what happens in life, it’s how you think and what you do about it that’s important.

I was researching some background to a change management project I am delivering for a local NHS Hospital Trust.  I wanted to accurately quote something I believed was attributed to Victor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor.  During my reading I came across his account of one experience he had whilst in Auschwitz.  I pass it on to you, with love.

... We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth -- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfilment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory...."

P.s. the quote I was looking for was “When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Are You Riding a Dead Horse?

Clearly these are not dead horses, but  do
you know a dead horse when you see one?

I was facilitating a change management workshop recently and one of the participants brought in this story. It made us all laugh, but later I began thinking about a few things I was doing and whether it was time to stop. I gave it to a friend for some light hearted relief, but their response was clearly a deeper and more reflective consideration.  So maybe this story is just for fun, or is there more to it than that?  You decide.

Riding a Dead Horse?


Dakota Indian tribal wisdom passed on from one generation to the next says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. 

In modern education, advice and guidance settings, a number of other dead horse strategies have been used, including: 

1. Deny the horse is dead.
2. Buy a stronger whip and beat the dead horse.
3. Change riders.
4. Appoint a committee to study the dead horse. 
5. Visit competitors to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Upgrade dead horse working conditions. 
7. Attend a Dead Horse Motivational Seminar. 
8. Discard the saddle; ride the dead horse bareback. 
9. Point the dead horse in the opposite direction and note how well he maintains his position. 
10. Reclassify the dead horse as living-impaired.
11. Compare current riding to riding before horse acquisition.
12. Factor in dead horse savings re food, water, and maintenance.
13. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
14. Send the dead horse to a continuing development course.
15. Compare your dead horse's performance to other companies' dead horses.
16. Do a time management study to see if lighter riders would improve productivity.
17. Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.
18. Declare that a dead horse has lower overheads and therefore runs faster.
19. Issue a corporate mission statement to develop more "passion" for the art of horse riding.
20. Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.
21. Gather other dead animals and announce a diversity program.
22. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

My question to you today - "is it time for you to do something different?"  Are you riding a dead horse, but have not yet realised it?

Hold the Front Page - Again

According to the Institute of Leadership and Management, managing change effectively is going to be one of the coming year’s hot topics. 

We are already in unchartered waters with a new political landscape. The economic and environmental pressures to do more with less and to discover new ways of living and working have increased uncertainty in an already uncertain world.

So, what’s to do?  Billy Ocean would say “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”, but that was back in 1985.  25 years on, simply toughing it out may well not be enough.  What is certain is that doing more of the same will not produce different results (Albert Einstein agrees with me).

Around 10 years ago Wolfgang Grulke wrote a book called 10 Lessons from the Future.  I read it again the other week and was struck by how many of his foretellings have come about.  What did he know that most of us missed?  Clearly the clues are out there, we just need to know what to look for.

I recently listened to a presentation by Tom Peters on Leadership in the 21st Century.  Apart from it being entertaining, it was also very interesting.  One thing he said was that great leaders are “dealers in hope”  - they help you “believe that the sun will come up tomorrow.”  To me, that means engaging staff with your vision for the future and empowering them to “do more than they dreamed possible”, to paraphrase the actor Robert Altman.

Change is definitely a constant and it is here to stay, but it is not going to occur in a straight line from the past, through the present and into the future.  To quote Doctor Who, “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect... but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly.... timey-wimey.... stuff”.  Definitely complicated.

How to manage a big ball of wibbly wobbly stuff then?  Here are a couple of ideas:-

Choose a future you want and create a compelling vision that your staff can buy in to.  Scan the horizon together as far as you can see and use your peripheral vision – that’s what fighter pilots do. Identify the distant specs that will inevitably become opportunities or obstacles in the future.

Adapt and respond quickly to anticipated changes.  Look at your products and services. Review your channels and markets.  Ask your customers how their needs are changing.  Teach your staff to be agile too.  It can be difficult sometimes, but it’s vitally important.

Have you noticed that children are often better with new technology than their parents?  Children are more able to take risks without the fear of failure.  We learn to fear failure and avoid risk as we grow older.  Some of that is a good thing – it stops you burning your fingers or getting run over - but some is not so useful.  Learn how to recognise unhelpful discomfort or fear and move beyond it.

I ride a motorbike (a Honda Blackbird since you ask) and that can definitely be risky.  But I love it.  It's not the most practical or safe mode of transport but it's not about getting from A to B.  It's about the in-between.