6. Don’t just manage, coach

Part of our methodology series

Projects that are accepted into Frontier Technology Livestreaming receive support in three ways: money to pilot their ideas, match-making with technology suppliers and support to work in agile ways.

Of course, a big part of our job is managing the programme, making sure that the teams are working well, recommending advancement to the next stage and so on. But along with that management and due diligence, our job is to support the teams’ method and help them to work in agile ways is delivered in a coachlike style.

Much has been written about the difference between a manager and a coach. For us, it’s about being mindful that innovation is doing something that has never been done before. By definition, that means none of us can be experts that manage the rest. Instead, we work to foster a collaborative working culture that makes it possible for everyone to bring their expertise and good judgement to the table in our pursuit of a shared goal.

We’ve made a few decisions that might seem small, but all add up and contribute to a culture fit for innovation.

Self-serve

We’ve made regular catch ups with the team informal and as-needed instead of arbitrary and enforced (we really didn’t want to get into a regular update schedule where team members are working to prepare materials for us, this feels like a waste of time and effort for everyone). So the teams request time with us, share work in progress and are at liberty to request regular catch ups if that’s what they prefer.

Recommendations over mandates

Ultimately, our teams need to feel positive and confident about the work they’ll be delivering. Naturally, there are contractual, legal agreements and other due diligence requirements, but when it comes to methodology our contribution has been mostly recommendations or suggestions on how we might build, measure and learn sooner so that we can validate our thinking and course correct where we need to. For the most part these recommendations trigger a line of thinking that gets enhanced further by the team.

Many channels

Being dotted all over the world can be a challenge for team communication. To start with we set up a number of channels so that people could get in touch however suited them — there’s a dedicated Skype and project email address (along with our individual ones, of course). We’re about to trial Slack, but only for teams who use it already.

Give confidence

Often, the trickiest thing about working in an agile style is that it can feel quite bold for the unfamiliar. For teams members who are new to this method, the biggest benefit of a coaching style is giving them the confidence to build early in order to learn and adjust sooner for greater impact and results overall.

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Our own learning and things we plan to do differently with the next cohort: for the next cohort we’re going complement this style with a structured, more formal immersion into FTL methodology at the beginning of the projects.