The Chief Coaching Officer, MangoApps, Timeboxing, Apple, Tacos & Profit per X

“The big money is not in the buying or selling, but in the waiting.” — Charlie Munger

Hope you’re Thriving!

And all of a sudden, it’s August!
Where has 2021 disappeared!
It feels like time goes by faster as we age. Yet, in fact, actual time and our mental time are very different things.

I’ve had a good week being very busy and working to catch up on quite a few big events happening lately. At a 2-day strategic planning workshop this week, we were creative within the discipline of the strategic planning process and challenged their industry norms, and it was super creative and super cool. For example, we switched the Core Customer to be internal and then looked to create a coaching department.

The Chief Coaching Officer and the Coaching Department

The best example of a coaching department or Chief Coaching Officer that people might understand is from the TV series Billions, which centres around the lives of a Wall Street Hedge Fund. Wendy Rhoades, played by Maggie Siff, does a stellar job of showcasing the effect performance coaching can have. This is not touchy-feely stuff, but bottom-line boosting performance enhancement. Her job as an in-house performance coach keeps the fiercely brilliant and ambitious young men of the firm functioning at peak power. The boss, Bobby Axelrod, played by Damian Lewis, sees her as one of the most valuable assets of his firm. The in-house coach concept is modelled after performance coaches like Denise Shull, who works with Wall Street investment professionals in the same capacity, minus the television drama.

The concept of the Chief Coaching Officer or an in house coach might not be suitable for every organisation. But it’s fascinating how the concept could be applied.
Watch this one-minute clip from the show Billions, demonstrating how the internal coach is applied in that fictional company. It’s a dramatization and far too snappy but is highly accurate in what really happens.

Wendy Rhoades, High-Performance Coach in Action

MangoApps team interaction software

It’s been a while since I recommended a new tool, but finally, I came across a new tool that had a leadership team very excited this week. MangoApps is a central company hub, an intranet, communications, training, and workspace combined into one. Which is a lot to explain easily — see the infographic below.
It first came up because we talked about how to effectively share Core Values stories with the team. Then we were talking about employee dashboards. As you can see below, both of these were covered by the tool, amongst many other things.

One other note, one thing I love on the MangoApps website. If you look at the footer, one of the headings is “Differentiated features”, and they list 9 main features that differentiate them from the competition. Now in some areas, this might be a target for your competition to build their feature roadmap. But for customers in the right arene, if you pay attention and focus on your strategy and differentiation, it can be highly valuable.

Note — I don’t receive any payment and have no relationship with this company. It just looks like it might be a useful tool.

How Timeboxing Works and Why It Will Make You More Productive

Daniel Markovitz’s argument for migrating to-do lists into calendars describes five problems with the to-do list.

• First, they overwhelm us with too many choices.
• Second, we are naturally drawn to simpler tasks that are more easily accomplished.
• Third, we are rarely drawn to important but not urgent tasks, like setting aside time for learning.
• Fourth, to-do lists on their own lack the essential context of what time you have available.
• Fifth, they lack a commitment device to keep us honest.

In a recent survey of 100 productivity hacks, timeboxing — migrating to-do lists into calendars — was ranked the most useful. Timeboxing can give you a much greater sense of control over your workday. You decide what to do and when to do it, block out all distractions for that timeboxed period, and get it done. The benefits of calendarized timeboxing are many, varied, and highly impactful. The practice improves how we feel (control), how much we achieve as individuals (personal productivity), and how much we achieve in the teams we work in (enhanced collaboration). This may be the single most important skill or practice you can possibly develop as a modern professional, as it buys you so much time to accomplish anything else. It’s also straightforwardly applied and at no cost.

As well as being the most useful productivity hack, timeboxing has five additional benefits according to Marc Zao-Sanders, CEO of Filtered.com;

• First, timeboxing into a calendar enables the relative positioning of work.
• Second, the practice enables you to communicate and collaborate more effectively.
• Third, it gives you a comprehensive record of what you’ve done.
• Fourth, you will feel more in control.
• Fifth, you will be substantially more productive.

Read the HBR article here How Timeboxing Works and Why It Will Make You More Productive

Quick clips

Iceland trialled a shorter working week, but there’s a catch

Apple’s commitment to design extends to office paper. Apple sends letters with rounded corners

Do you eat tacos like it’s your true calling? Now it really can be. McCormick is on the lookout for its first-ever Director of Taco Relations.

This week on The Growth Whisperers podcast

Profit per X is a concept from Jim Collins where companies gain a piercing insight into how to most effectively generate sustained and robust cash flow and profitability. In particular, they discover the single denominator — Profit per X — that has the greatest impact on their economics.

In this episode, we discuss why Profit per X is a strategic metric, and not an execution metric, what makes a good Profit per X, and how to align your Profit per X with your hedgehog, as well as providing Profit per X examples.

How Profit per X uniquely drives profit

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Keep Thriving!

Brad Giles