7

Implementing a Systems Infrastructure

An early definition of organization development (OD) is “an effort planned, organizationwide, and managed from the top to increase organization effectiveness and health through planned interventions in the organization’s processes using behavioral-science knowledge” (Beckhard 1969, 9). More recent definitions—based on many years of practice and research—sound more like, “Organization development is the process of increasing organizational effectiveness and facilitating personal and organizational change through interventions driven by social and behavioral science knowledge” (Anderson 2015, 3).

The main difference between the old and new definition is that OD can happen anywhere in an organization. It can happen on the division, department, or group level and does not have to come from the top of the organization. Any person within an organization can apply OD skills and methods, just as anyone within an organization can begin to use coaching methods.

After 30 years in the field, we have found that the number one issue with many OD efforts is the lack of a systems approach. Instead of building an infrastructure of actions, they institute quick fixes.

If you and your organization want to conduct an organizational analysis to figure out why the new performance appraisal or technology system isn’t working, the restructuring or merger is not producing adequate results, or the new hiring system isn’t increasing engagement, you will likely find instead an inadequate support system to sustain the very goal of the change itself. Imagine a stool with only one leg, a car with little gas in the tank, or a broken arm trying to heal with a makeshift sling. You may succeed for a short period of time, but eventually your luck will run dry and you will find yourself no better off than before the change initiative. At that point, leaders turn around and say, “What happened? Why isn’t this working?”

Using a Systems Model

By using a systems approach, practitioners can increase the chances of influencing organizational change. Let’s take the following organizational goal: “Increase the health of employees to better manage health costs, reduce absenteeism, and mitigate stress in the workplace.” To achieve this, the company will:

• Conduct a yearly health fair.

• Offer a series of online courses on stress management.

• Include health impact questions in the yearly climate survey and a separate survey specifically tailored to the relationship of participating in company health programs and bottom-line impact.

The first health fair is a great success and in the initial six months, 100 of 3,000 people take advantage of the stress courses. As the year goes on, only a trickle of people participate in the courses, and attendance at the second health fair is half that of the first. The surveys indicate minimal impact. What happened? The program merely limped along because a systems approach was not used in the design and implementation stages. Here is what a systems effort might look like:

• a yearly health fair with tests that earn you points and lead to lower health insurance payments

• a monthly, company-wide video program on health and stress reduction ideas, with the company CEO taking part in the panel

• the introduction of a balanced work-life policy with guidelines for every department to follow

• a monthly online newsletter on health issues pertaining to company population and culture, with statistics on health plans and competitors

• stress workout seminars once a year, during which intact teams discuss and brainstorm ways to reduce stress within their own team and work area.

This is a systems approach. In the previous example, every pertinent “system” component within the organization is included in the implementation, such as:

• budget and costs

• vision and values

• measurement and results

• benefits and compensation

• hiring and training

• technology.

Yet, even a well-planned design will not ensure successful results. The last ingredient necessary in a systems approach is that the plan includes as many behavioral hooks as possible. It is not enough to create vision and value statements that claim the importance of work-life balance. Nor is it enough to say, “Managers will follow the work-life balance guidelines.” A plan doesn’t become real unless there are accompanying benefits that affect employees, managers, and leaders concretely, such as managing your choices and gaining enough points to reduce your insurance payment, being measured as a good manager because you support work-life balance while also increasing the bottom line, and observing realistic role models. Even excellent ideas fail because people only went as far as throwing them out there, without planning them all the way to the behavioral hook.

So now go back and replace “stress and health management program” with “coaching culture program.” The same rules and systems approach apply. Table 7-1 takes these key organization development components and applies them to the planning and implementation of a coaching culture. If you and a task force use this job aid as a road map, your plan will have a great chance for success: Create a vision, assess organizational readiness, design the components and implementation plan, and measure and sell the benefits. Consider how the Phillips Corporation—a machine-tool manufacturer and distributor in Maryland—leveraged these organization development components to become a coaching organization.

Table 7-1. How to Build a Coaching Organization

Developing a coaching organization involves a systems approach that begins with creating a vision and testing readiness and then moves toward implementation and measurement. This ensures that the infrastructure will continue to support a coaching culture over time.

Create a Vision

» What are the benefits of becoming a coaching organization?

» What departments and functions within the organization would support a coaching culture?

» How would such a culture support organizational goals and values? What organizational drivers will be fulfilled?

» What are the outcomes of becoming a coaching organization (for individuals, teams, and the entire organization)?

Assess Organizational Readiness

» Does the organization believe in continual learning and change, or is the status quo valued above all else? How does it demonstrate continual learning and change?

» Is there a history or precedent within the organization for allocating money toward development programs? Is it valued? Is it considered during the budgeting process?

» Does the culture support openness, confrontations, honesty, and dialogue—or is it best to withhold information?

» Are there other learning structures in the organization that the coaching program can depend on, be linked with, or build on? If so, what are they?

Assess Organizational Readiness

» Is the human resource department valued and credible, or is it seen as merely a compliance department?

» Are managers encouraged or measured on how well they develop others, communicate, and use a coaching approach? How so?

» How have other programs been successfully implemented within the organization?

Design the Components and Implementation of the Plan

» Who can become champions of a coaching organization and establish a task force?

» To what extent will the effort balance homegrown and outside experts?

» How will we define and outline each building block of a coaching organization: coaching tools and mindsets, dialogue, and supporting infrastructures?

» Given your organization and constraints, how will you develop a project plan with a schedule, meetings, owners, steps, roll-out plan, benchmarks, contingencies, and tracking?

» What criteria will be considered to determine how costs will be budgeted and tracked?

Design the Components and Implementation of the Plan

» Who will own and be administratively responsible for being in charge of the solution and transformation?

» What are the key benefits and success factors? What measuring tools (software, accounting support, surveys, focus groups, strategic alignment factors, bottom-line factors) do you need to continually track and sell the coaching organization activities?

Build a Coaching Organization

» How will information about the program be communicated in a multiyear communication plan?

» What data-gathering methods are the most appropriate? What costs are involved? How will data be shared, and with whom? Will you consider outside benchmarking, surveys, 360-degree instruments, inventories, supportive coaching software, and technology?

Measure and Sell the Benefits

» Who are the key stakeholders? How can you link your agenda to their agenda? What negotiation strategies will you use?

» How will you relate the coaching infrastructure components to all other pertinent programs and demonstrate mutual support?

» How are you planning for costs, both in the short and long term? Will you conduct a cost-benefit analysis?

» What supporting materials, charts, graphs, role descriptions, and other marketing materials will guide your implementation plan?

Measure and Sell the Benefits

» How will you measure key success factors of the coaching organization and publicize the results?

» What is the political climate within your organization? How will you plan for contingencies, formal and informal power channels, decision-maker involvement, and how things usually get done throughout the organization?

Adapted from Bianco-Mathis, Roman, and Nabors (2008)

Linking Coaching to Neuroscience

As Daniel Goleman proclaimed almost 20 years ago in his book Working With Emotional Intelligence, “We’re being judged by a new yardstick: not just by how smart we are, or by our training and expertise, but also by how well we handle ourselves and each other” (1998, 3). More recently, Kim Scott described a foundational challenge for leaders in her book, Radical Candor, saying, “Your ability to build trusting, human connections with the people who report directly to you will determine the quality of everything that follows” (2017, 8). Yet we are still faced with the challenge of “selling” the value of coaching behaviors. Perhaps neuroscience will prove to be a new weapon in the arsenal of practitioners who want to leverage everyday conversations in service to coaching cultures.

In Quiet Leadership, David Rock (2006) introduced a new approach to leadership. He took a scientific, practical approach and, as he explains, “deconstructed the ‘code’ behind those high-performance conversations that transformed people’s performance.” Seven years later, in his 2013 TEDx Talk, “Learning About the Brain Changes Everything,” Rock described why learning about the brain helps people better understand themselves and others:

• The novelty effect: Something new captures people’s attention and opens connections. People are more willing to listen to something new.

• Tangibles are easier to see: Linking specific biological research with relatable stories and examples helps people visualize and connect to the process being described.

• Understanding experience leads to more choices: If people appreciate the physiological impact of emotions on themselves and others, they are likely to behave more mindfully.

Better understanding can support increased buy-in. Individuals and teams can learn to create new neural pathways leading to new behaviors. What does this look like? Neuroscience—specifically, insights into how the brain focuses, learns, and moves toward or away from new learning experiences—is at the center of how coaching works. Utilizing neuroscience principles will support individuals and organizations to more readily build bridges (new behaviors) over established pathways (old behaviors) that are no longer serving them well. This is an exciting addition to the field. Neuroscience presents practical evidence (brain scans, blood pressure, hormone levels) demonstrating what happens inside the brain when individuals diligently choose and practice behaviors that move them closer to their goals. A review of neuroscience research demonstrates how it supports the essence of coaching and coaching cultures.

Hardwiring Coaching Mindsets and Tools

The tools in this book—the Seven Cs Coaching Map, the C-O-A-CH model, the building blocks of dialogue—equip you to create, practice, and perpetuate a coaching culture in your organization. To set yourself up for success, your move toward creating a coaching culture should be carefully explained, orchestrated, and staged over a period of one or two years.

What creative learning methods might be useful at this point? Consider our two company examples, Seyfarth Shaw in the introduction and Phillips Corporation in this chapter. People need to be trained, guided, and supported with coaching materials and job aids. Recent studies show that this is an area of opportunity for the field because only 42 percent of managers have received 125-200 hours of coach-specific training (ICF 2016). Some methods that you can make a part of your system planning are in Table 7-2.

Table 7-2. Hardwiring Coaching Techniques

» Develop intact group training in which teams or departments learn these concepts and practice them with real job scenarios.

» Train a core group of visible leaders to take part in teaching the coaching classes.

» Create and implement a one-day kickoff training day for all project teams that incorporates coaching methods and results.

» At all times, have each person on your executive team coaching junior managers.

» Create workshops with trained internal or external professionals (virtual or in person) in which participants bring real work activities and practice coaching approaches.

» Benchmark other companies that have coaching cultures. Visit and take videos. Stream these videos on your company intranet.

» Choose key influencers in the organization and give them more intense training than others so they can be role models and speak at events and special meetings.

» Develop your own company or organizational textbook or job aids for coaching.

» Institute a formal program for all director-level and above employees to receive 360-degree performance appraisals, with at least three built-in coaching sessions to review results and develop action plans.

» Conduct a pilot, widely advertise the results, and use it as a model to implement throughout the organization.

» Train in-house advanced coaches who can be available to support others who have coaching dilemmas.

» Widely distribute coaching articles.

» Conduct yearly coaching booster seminars for all departments with special seminars for leadership (guest coaching gurus in leadership).

» Separate all training so that there is field practice and peer coaching in between classes.

» Incorporate coach training into all management and leadership development programs.

» Tailor the coaching approach to specifically meet the needs of different roles in the organization (salespeople, administrators, global travelers, service providers, research teams, coders, engineers, HR professionals, strategic planners, finance people, and IT).

These learning activities should be rolled out at the same time you are building supporting vehicles—incorporating coaching into existing structures and creating new structures to sustain the coaching culture. As human beings, we don’t embrace change until we have to actually live it—basically, until there are rewards or consequences for incorporating such change. Table 7-3 provides a list of examples (with important additional resources embedded in the list) you can adopt or morph to fit your organization.

These coaching structures do not require that everyone in an organization be a certified coach. Rather, having key learning professionals within such organizations attend coaching workshops, join coaching forums, build coaching tools and guidelines, educate all members in the organization, and tie coaching behaviors to strategic success will make the transition smoother. That way they can pass along the coaching mindset to everyone else in the organization.

Table 7-3. Sample Coaching Structures

» Publish a monthly coaching blog.

» Form coaching teams in which members coach one another.

» Have employees join local or international coaching organizations.

» Have employees get formal coaching certification.

» Integrate coaching into the hiring and onboarding process: Every new hire gets a coach for six months.

» Make coaching a part of your promotion process: Everyone who is promoted or affected by a job restructuring (no matter how high in the organization) works with a coach for three months.

» Form coaching book or article clubs, either in person or virtually.

» Form coaching round robin groups or partnerships (in person or virtual) in which participants share coaching stories and coach one another.

» Publish and formalize coaching guidelines (the coaching you have in your company, how to get a formal coach, ways to coach colleagues and peers, how to be a coaching manager, how coaching fits with other learning systems within your company, how you measure coaching).

» Teach all coachees how to become coaches themselves.

» Teach managers how to hold monthly sharing stories meetings.

» Provide guest speakers and coaching webinars on coaching practices.

» Publish internal coaching highlights and successes.

» Develop a resource for finding and using dialogue tools for a specific on-the-job scenario.

» Use an app for giving and receiving just-in-time, daily feedback.

» Eliminate the existing performance appraisal process and replace with monthly coaching checkups (coaching appraisals) and yearly summaries of value to the organization.

» Incorporate coaching behaviors and standards into job descriptions, performance goals, and compensation and rewards program.

» Incorporate coaching mindset into strategic plan, corporate vision, and organizational values.

» Incorporate coaching into employee handbooks and management guidelines.

» Create a coaching initiative that goes beyond organizational boundaries and into the community, such as with schools, community groups, youth services, and religious organizations.

» Include fun and experiential activities so coaching and dialogue become engrained in the culture. Have contests, comic strips, and props that signify that you are a coaching organization.

Transforming Culture Through Coaching Appraisals

One of the more leading-edge coaching solution tools in Table 7-3 is the coaching appraisal. Dismantling your company’s performance appraisal process and introducing an entirely new program demonstrates how one carefully orchestrated initiative can influence an entire culture faster than a “throw darts at the wall” method. Deloitte kick-started this notion of a new performance management approach (Buckingham and Goodall 2015) and other companies have followed suit (Shook 2015). So what does this really mean, and what does it actually look like?

It has led to the trend of throwing out existing performance appraisals and replacing them with monthly coaching checkups—as being used by Deloitte, Gap, Juniper, Cargill, Accenture, and Adobe (Rock, Davis, and Jones 2014; Impraise 2016). As David Rock and colleagues explain, organizations are adopting what neuroscience research has proven and are adopting “growth mindset performance techniques” rather than the existing “fixed mindset” approaches. Organizations are realizing that getting everyone up to speed on coaching skills is now not just “a nice way to give feedback and develop people” but instead a major component for more realistically assessing performance and ultimately organizational success.

Research indicates that 95 percent of managers are dissatisfied with their performance management systems, and 90 percent of HR leaders believe that performance appraisals do not yield accurate information (Rock, Davis, and Jones 2014). Existing appraisal systems embody the following less than desirable, noncoaching characteristics:

• idiosyncratic rater effect

• form focused, not people focused

• judgmental, not supportive or developmental

• time consuming

• rating focused, not future focused

• anxiety driven, not engaging

• less meaningful in today’s fast-paced, service-oriented institutions

• forced to coincide with conceptual pay models as opposed to true performance.

Instead, what’s being recommended are very simple periodic coaching sessions. For example, you can build the coaching appraisals around monthly sessions and have both the supervisor and employee gather data in a variety of ways. Questions for the supervisor to guide the discussion include (and note, this is a two-way discussion):

• What’s working and should be continued?

• What can you do more of to be effective?

• What can you do less of to be more effective?

• What will you be doing over the next month to address this?

• What can I do to assist you with this?

Then, at the end of the performance cycle, the manager can submit a one-page assessment that addresses the employee’s overall value to the organization:

1. Given what I know about this person’s performance, and if it were my money, I would award this person the highest possible compensation [measures overall performance and unique value].

2. Given what I know of this person’s performance, I would always want him or her on my team [measures ability to work with others].

3. This person is at risk for low performance [identifies problems that might harm the customer or team].

4. This person is ready for a growth opportunity today [measures potential].

Other companies are embracing new software and social media apps that allow them to give feedback to one another (up, down, and sideways) in the moment each day. Imagine you get a ping on your phone and you are alerted to some just-in-time feedback from your boss: “Hey, Mike, great report. You incorporated the ideas of your colleagues from the task force and the argument is persuasive. Your writing is concise and helps others move to action.” Later in the day you get another ping signifying that you have gotten a summarized report from eight people on what you can do “more of” or “less of” based on yesterday’s meeting with the client. You skim it quickly. You see some great ideas you can incorporate into your routine. This kind of technology is available and can be easily tailored to different environments.

This approach comes with its own set of challenges and a need for practice in dialogue, coaching conversations, and giving and receiving feedback. This “coaching to performance” approach is beneficial in the following ways:

• dialogue focused, not paper focused

• challenging and supportive, not labeling

• time relevant, not quarterly or full-year snapshots

• behavioral, not vague and general statements

• informs compensation decision later on in the year, but not directly linked to vague compensation constraints.

The cornerstone of such a system is that managers, employees, and the entire organization must learn and adopt a coaching mindset with inherent coaching techniques: powerful dialogue, two-way communication, continuous improvement, concrete development actions that are tracked frequently, and “feed forward agreements” in between coaching meetings. So why does this transform the entire culture? David Rock and colleagues explain that the anxiety that a performance management system (especially rating systems) causes evokes the “fight or flight” response and “is ill-suited for the kind of thoughtful, reflective conversations that allow people to learn from a performance review” (Rock, Davis, and Jones 2014, 3). Thus, they recommend a system that evokes the positive, receptive parts of the brain and emphasizes growth and future possibilities, not the inherent dead-end, nongrowth, fixed mindset of traditional appraisals. They state that fixed mindsets hold people and organizations back because of mental paralysis:

This is a powerful example of how one pervasive tool can provide not just a behavioral hook, but also a person-to-person immersion into an entire coaching culture.

Measuring and Tracking Results

Remember when all that was used to measure training was the end-of-course “smile” instrument? It is good to know that you now have the right tools and technology to track and measure more meaningful and realistic data; specifically, data that indicate significant change and impact. What proof do we have that putting money into this coaching program is worth the trouble? What statistics do we have to indicate that a coaching culture produces higher bottom-line results and successful on-the-job behaviors?

The most prevalent tool to measure coaching results is a 360-degree feedback instrument, given before and after a coaching cycle (Sherpa Coaching 2016). This is an important indicator. As we saw in chapter 4, there are a variety of such instruments, some readily available online and some requiring certification. There is also a choice in tools for individual or group and team results. Yet, as coaching has evolved, organizations are asking for indicators of financial benefits and overall organizational impact.

It is wise to use a combination of direct and indirect measures and qualitative and quantitative measures. Using a combination of approaches at multiple levels is usually referred to as measuring return on effectiveness. The best way to ascertain the measures that are most important to your organization—that fit your business and leadership mindset—is to ask. Form focus groups and conduct interviews to brainstorm and finalize a list of measures that will most likely be embraced in your organizational setting. At the same time, gather ideas on the best way to collect such data: Add coaching-specific questions to existing organizational surveys, collect end-of-coaching surveys and 360-degree results, conduct interviews to dig deeper and discover financial impact, work with accounting or finance to identify and collect all costs associated with coaching, and design coaching reports that grab strategic decision makers.

Two of the more sophisticated measures for coaching results are return on investment and impact on business. They rely on gathering information from leadership, management, and employees on what measures are most meaningful; designing a multimethod strategy for collecting that information; and using qualitative and quantitative methodology to collate and report the data. Using such methods, executive coaching has shown to provide return on investment of three to six times cost (Hawkins 2008). Although more work intensive, becoming politically savvy in offering such analytics is becoming paramount in today’s world. You need to move beyond the basic results of participant reaction and learning, and measure actual on-the-job application and impact on the entire organization (Kirkpatrick 2006). Organizations are developing separate departments dedicated to organizational analytics. Join forces with such groups, use a consultant, or educate yourself in analytics.

One of the more useful resources for stepping into the world of coaching measures is Measuring the Success of Coaching (Phillips, Phillips, and Edwards 2012). Jack and Patricia Phillips provide research, specific formulas, extensive cases and examples, and sample processes for not only obtaining measures, but also making decisions for continuous improvement of the entire coaching process. And that’s the main point: Don’t just measure; do something with those measures and track improvement based on those changes. They emphasize a multidimensional approach because many factors need to be considered when measuring tangible and intangible benefits and results.

With intangible results (such as level of increased job satisfaction through coaching), more steps are required to transfer the data to monetary form. It is important to ascertain the company’s measurement objective at the beginning of collecting data because it will influence how you collect the data, the instrument you use, and the assumptions you are going to apply to the calculations. As you brainstorm the idea of measurement with leaders and groups of employees, it is helpful to create a checklist of what you want to find out from the results: the effectiveness of internal versus external coaches. The relationship between coaching success and coaches who have had more training than others. The costs compared with other learning initiatives. The engagement level before and after another new phase of coaching is added into the culture.

More specifically, if you merely want to discover whether an individual applies certain identified behaviors after a six-month coaching process (measuring application), that can be measured through a pre- and post-360-degree survey. However, if in addition to this you also want to discover the effect that coaching has on raising customer sales or increasing revenue, that will entail additional sets of gathered data and analytical tools (measuring impact). The Phillips recommend planning for collecting data at five levels: satisfaction, learning, application, impact, and ROI (Phillips and Phillips 2005).

Sure, measuring the return on an investment in a person is a bit more difficult than measuring the increase in the number of widgets produced per hour. Tim Morin (2004) provides the following formula, similar to many other such formulas in the literature:

The challenge is clearly identifying the benefits achieved through the coaching program and assigning a monetary value to those benefits. This is where brainstorming with your company professionals and experts comes in. If they have a say in what goes into such a calculation, they will more readily believe the results. Morin outlines the following steps:

1. Identify what you want to measure and collect baseline measures—even if you and your colleagues (with input from others) need to make experienced assumptions.

2. Measure results using pertinent data-gathering tools and existing documents. Some results are more tangible than others and are easier to translate into monetary value or bottom-line impact. But as Morin points out, “This is not to say that the tangible outweighs the intangible in terms of importance. In fact, intangible changes in the client’s behavior can often have a wider-ranging impact than, or may lead to, the more tangible benefits of coaching.”

3. Through analytics and formulas, convert benefits into dollars. It is important to be clear and transparent in showing which measures are direct (totally dependent on coaching) versus those correlated to coaching (with coaching being the new or important ingredient), but possibly based on other factors as well. Although it is evident that executive coaching can have a considerable influence on business results, other factors obviously have an impact. Morin (2004) gives this example:

Today’s business environment requires HR and talent development professionals to provide a return on investment for coaching. The initial setup of tools and measures will be challenging, but once in place, the data will provide important metrics to guide decision making, adjustments, continuous improvement mindsets, and accomplishment of both personal and organization goals: in short, the “stuff” of what makes coaching organizations.

Making It Real

Because coaching programs have become a significant part of organizations, the demand for measures and successful returns has increased. Measuring the impact of coaching both qualitatively and quantitatively must be part of every coach’s tool kit. Utilizing a combination of factors and multiple levels of data, you can gather insights into behavioral and bottom-line results. And most important, data keep proving tangible results in many areas: productivity, sales, engagement, morale, confidence, cooperation, and decision making.

This chapter emphasized the absolute necessity of using a systems approach in implementing and hardwiring coaching behaviors into an organization. For coaching to become a habit, the organization must reinforce coaching in all major practices and processes—performance appraisals, meetings protocol, webinars, virtual team coaching sessions, training in coaching techniques, leadership role models, and strategic initiatives. Using concepts from emotional intelligence and neuroscience research further enriches and increases the implementation and growth of coaching cultures.

1. Describe the present performance appraisal process in your organization. What is the typical approach, process, paperwork, mindset, and outcomes? Provide an example of the language typically used.

■ Present performance appraisal scenario:

■ Present language:

2. Based on what you read in this chapter, develop a goal for how the organization can move toward (or improve) a coaching performance appraisal process. Then indicate new language that could be used in the process.

■ Goal:

■ New language:

3. Describe what measures and measurement processes are presently being used in your organization to assess the outcomes of existing coaching efforts.

4. Develop a goal for the type of measures and measurement process that would be more effective in your organization, indicate at least three tools that would be needed, and state the new improved outcomes.

■ Goal:

■ Tools:

■ Outcomes: