Coaching agreement

What I’d like to discuss before we agree to work together

I design and transform places of work to be more humane and fulfilling.

From previous experience, it has become apparent that my work on org design and transformation has the most impact if we agree on the following principles. If we don’t, we will pull in different directions as soon as we hit some bumps in the road and we’ll both be frustrated. So, let’s not do that :)

• People are inherently good and want to do the right thing when in a nurturing environment (Theory Y)
• People are motivated by autonomy, mastery, purpose, and belonging
• If you treat people like adults they will act like adults. If you treat them like children, they will act like children.
• “People don’t buy what you do, but why you do it.” Start with why.
• Leadership is taking responsibility for the achievement of a goal and attracting others to volunteer their efforts.
• People can only have close relationships with a limited amount of people in tribes around 150.
• Business = a system to sustainably satisfy the needs of customers (impact) and employees (fulfillment)

My ideal coaching gig

I am committed to the deliberate development of company structure and processes (and as a consequence its culture), by means of involving all employees in its transparent co-creation. I will act as an owner of the system by taking responsibility for looking at the organization as a system, hold the space for change, give impulses for change, and see it through.

I am motivated by working with founders on setting up minimal org structures and processes that enable the following.

What we will try to achieve

autonomous, self-sufficient, cross-functional teams

• because in a complex context of uncertain requirements they outperform organizations of functional silos (handovers = waste)
• they are also more rewarding for individuals working within them because of a higher sense of purpose and autonomy through end-to-end ownership

create a safe space that enables teams to be more productive

• where people trust each other and cooperate
• where people feel safe to experiment
• where people feel safe to admit failure and are ready to learn from it

This means many traditional management practices won’t apply and we will implement some variation of the following as appropriate to your context.

• Shared purpose: a shared purpose ensures we pull in the same direction while making decentralized decisions
• Decentralized decision-making with mandate, consent, advice process, and a conflict resolution process.
• Peer advice: Because people work in cross-functional teams feedback needs to come from their peers instead of a single supervisor.
• Evaluation and salary process with peer involvement
• Host leadership: A host makes sure everyone is having a good time but has the mandate and the responsibility to step in if need be
• Career development outside the power hierarchy. Getting better at what you do instead of managing others.
• Transparency: “Transparency breeds trust, and trust is the foundation of great teamwork.”, “when team members are entrusted with all the information available, they can make the same decisions a founder would in their case”
• Value creation network as a model for the organization instead of a command & control power hierarchy
• Learning organization: Continuous learning on individual, team and company level (e.g. through personal development budgets, Open Spaces, Brown Bag Lunches, Communities of Practice etc.)
• and then some…

We’ll know that we are on the right track by measuring customer and employee satisfaction.

Don’t worry, we won’t tackle all of these on day one, but we need to agree that this is where we are heading. Read here what this looks like at Gini where I lead the effort of putting this into practice.

Introducing these practices will create uncertainty at first. Some of them won’t work on the first try. Part of my job is to hold the space for us to experiment until we make it work for us. I will do this by authentically assuring people that this can work, because I have experienced it in several places first hand, and by reminding people of the reasons behind why we are doing this.

What I expect my role to be like

• I will be in close collaboration with the leadership of the organization to have the clout to make organizational change happen.
• I will involve people that are affected by a change in the change process. This takes more time than “just doing it”, but it also has a higher likelihood of acceptance and success.
• I will not have coercive power over anyone. It gets in the way of coaching.

What you can expect of me

• challenge the status quo
• facilitate change processes on a team (retro) and a company level (participative proposals and experiments)
• meet people where they are: giving concrete steps to imitate (Shu), helping to understand principles (Ha) or support self-directed innovation (Ri)
• be a source of knowledge and experience about Agile teams and self-organized organizations, Lean and systems thinking from other companies and my network
• be pragmatic: I don’t care, if we call it Agile, Lean, Teal or something else. Let’s do things that help teams be more effective and not argue about what the name of it is.
• here is a list of 42 tasks that more or less resemble what this means on a more concrete level for teams
• here is what this might look like for organizational changes
• at the risk of being very buzzwordy, these are the ideas and concepts that heavily influence my thinking: Agile Manifesto, Scrum, Kanban, Lean Startup, Jobs to be done, Design Thinking, Teal Organizations, BetaCodex, Sociocracy, Systems Thinking, Metamodernism
• I often get inspiration from these orgs and networks: Buffer, Basecamp, Enspiral, and Ouishare

Signs that we might be a good fit

• You read Reinventing Organisations, and while you are not convinced about all of it, the general idea of teal organizations gets you excited, because it feels like “the right thing to do”
• Long-term impact is more important to you than hitting quarterly numbers
• You see business as a force for good
• Achieving your company purpose & having an impact is more important to you than getting rich
• You don’t have an exit strategy

Red flags indicating we might not be a match

The following might be indicators (not the reasons) that we don’t agree on principles and should not work together.

• You want to grow your headcount because that shows progress
• Hitting quarterly revenue forecasts is more important than long term impact
• You think people bringing their authentic selves to work is esoteric bullshit
• You want people to be interchangeable cogs in your machine
• You have a dress code at work
• Your business model is based on revenue from advertisement or otherwise selling people’s data to third parties

What I’d like to discuss before we agree to work together

• Are we aligned on the principles described above? Where do we disagree? Is that a problem?
• What are your personal goals? How does the company fit in those? What makes this company worth struggling for?
• What is your definition of leadership? How do you want to lead the company to fulfill its vision? Are you prepared to lead with integrative power instead of authoritative power? Do you have the social capital to do so?
• How does an average employee at your company feel throughout a workday today? What would you like it to be like?
• Who owns the company? Do you have investors? What is their involvement? What are their goals? How free are you in running experiments on an organizational level?
• What networks outside of your company do you take part in? How do they influence your thinking?

You can find out about how I work, what I value, and my personal goal in my user manual. If you read this far, let’s talk.

When I wrote this, it felt a bit scary to exclude 99% of companies as potential employers. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that by sharing the things that really matter to me, I am attracting people who have meaning to me.