The New New Contract for Exponential Agility — Part II
how impactful coaching is a lever to exponential agility
In part I of this article we have looked at the proliferation of illusionary agile transformations and how it relates to the inflation of the “agile coach” role becoming impact-less, arbitrary and essentially meaningless. In part II we are elaborating on the criteria of real agility and how effective coaching impacts the transformation dynamics in a powerful way.
The essence of agility
The essence of agility is to be tightly connected with customer needs. Notably, those needs are not only hidden to the product developers, often they are not even obvious to the customers themselves, as Eric Ries described in his famous book The Lean Startup. To create the connection with customer needs requires the ability to dive into the deeper realm of needs. In Start With Why, Simon Sinek shows in depth how an agile delivery model requires to go beyond the level of assumptions regarding “requirements” from the customer and to connect to the sense of purpose.
“turn on a dime for a dime”
Once you have launched a product, today’s VUCA conditions are setting volatile contraints. They require product development to be resilient enough to “turn on a dime for a dime”: changing customer needs are identified early and the organization is agile enough to translate any investment in organizational change into revenue. In that way, another word for agility is adaptibility.
Purposeful adoptions of agility — type B transformations
Ignition
The type B transformation pattern starts with one or more people of an organization who buy into the actual idea of agility based on a deep inner reflection of life. Yup — the igniting vision goes beyond the logics of the legacy organizational system. It is the personal transformation that qualifies people to become leaders for a potential corporate transformation. They are able to relate themselves to agility because they realize there is a potential for personal purpose that would come along reinventing themselves. They have made a deep inner decision realizing that the expected benefit from traveling thru a difficult journey would become higher than hiding behind existing power structures and working models. They are willing to go thru the difficult journey of giving up a comfort zone and discovering new opportunities. Any type B agile adoption needs a sponsor of this kind and that’s what it takes to ignite a transformation into real agility.
Exponential growth is not an option: the break-even point into acceleration
In his book “Leading exponential change” Erich Bühler picks up the Lean Startup story and gives it a broader foundation. He explores as the level of agility is increasing and the ownership with the culture of agility is rising, at some point in time, a self-enforcing system dynamics starts to unfold that comes along with accelerated product innovation.
As the figure shows, approaching the point of self-sustaining agility is not happening in a linear progression. Rather, it requires a longer period of time to build a cultural DNA of agility thru informal leadership and simplification on all levels and areas of the organization.
Hence, for Type B agile adoptions to succeed, they cannot be limited to a lukewarm transformation. It requires to adopt the vision of entering the dynamics of exponential organizational growth and the sponsor needs to buy into that. Moreover, he needs the personal readiness and the intellectual capacity to comprehend the challenges that come along that journey of growth. The break-even point into accelerared growth can only be reached if the space for a deep level of reflection was established during the lift-off phase.
How an effective coaching creates impact
Now the fundamental difference between fake and impactful agile coaching becomes apparent. As we have seen in part I, fake agile coaching is related to adopting a career or business opportunity that feeds the need of being the internal stakeholder waving the banner of illusion. On the other side, impactful coaching requires an advanced coaching stance as well as the ownership with the values and very principles of agility.
Coaching versus coaching
A typical journey as a coach starts with a coaching education. However implementing the systemic relationship with the client is an awkward endeavor for an “agile coach”. Often the argument is presented “coaching doesn’t actually work here because my client expects me to present solutions”. While it is true that coaching and teaching are two separate things, powerful coaching requires a strongly level of leadership. When coaching is implemented as leadership, teaching and consulting activities can easily be integrated without jeopardizing the the overall coaching relationship.
Impactful coaching requires a deep connection
From my experience, for coaching to unfold exponential impact, it needs to go beyond anything taught by any of the coaching education programs. The power of coaching doesn’t come from a methodology, but from the inner stance. Multiple years of experience and continuous education is certainly helpful. However, it is the level of inner self-mastery and self-awareness that makes the difference for powerful impact. Given that, it is hardly possible to compare the level of professionalism of coaches. Rather, the client is in charge to judge whether a deep connection is or will be established with a coach in concern.
Coaching is effective as a systemic process between the coach and the client. The power of coaching comes not from the coach, not from the client, but from the depth and dynamics of the systemic relationship.
Implementing coaching with exponential impact
Implementing the five guidelines for coaching for exponential impact outlined by Rich Litvin is a key success factor:
- Deep listening — apply patience and silence
- Eliciting — drawing out the secret dreams and vision
- Exponential thinking — expanding and extrapolating opportunities — greatness vs. possibility
- Leadership — strengthening the self-confidence
- Strategy — designing the environment for a higher level than tactics
Professionalism in the agile coaching business
Professionalism in coaching for agility can only be achieved if both sides, the coach and the manager who sponsors the transformation, are co-actively exploring a deeper level of purpose. As a manifesto for professionalism, any agile coach should be fully aware of the dynamics described in this article and strive to establish a real sense of purpose. This might include refusing enquiries that don’t show signs of readiness. At the same time, the managers’ responsibility is to be ready to go beyond perceived limits and to reflect on his real problem, his real goals as well as the real potential and opportunities of his organization.
About the author
Marc has 17 years of experience as an external consultant in a wide range of industries including insurance, automotive, energy, telecommunications, financial services and banking. Since 2008 he helps organizations adopting agility as a coach and trainer. If you are courageous enough to ignite a transformation towards exponential agility, Marc offers you to
- help you understand what agility is all about
- support you to make your enterprise mission explicit and your product vision better tangible
- be an impulse provider in your journey to support managers to become leaders and people to become high performing teams driven by a clear sense of purpose
- advice how to create transparency on the progress of your journey and how it relates to your business goals.
You can contact him at ml@marclustig.com.
