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Our recent article "Do You Know What The Future Has In Store For Your Organisation?" explores the inevitability of progress, the unintended consequences of progress, and what organisations will look like in the future.
Now, we ask what can organisations do to prepare for tomorrow’s world.
Times are Changing…
Let’s first remind ourselves of what the ‘typical’ organisation looks like now and what it might look like in the future.
Watch out for the Red Herring!
There is a lot to consider. Indeed, the prospect of everything that we currently know, understand and believe, being disrupted and reconfigured is a daunting one. But the red herring here is to focus on the automated activity and neglect the human activity. Preparing people to deal with change is essential to improve chances of successfully transitioning from one state to another.
Create Extraordinary Environments
For early adopters, developing a sustainable coaching culture is an important building block in creating conditions that help the new breed of employee to prosper. Coaching cultures can separate organisations with ordinary performance from those that achieve extraordinary results.
When a coaching culture is established, relationships between people improve, problem solving is shared, creativity is enhanced, talent is mobilised and people become more flexible, adaptable and resilient in the face of change. But whilst it is widely accepted that coaching cultures can have an incredible impact on an organisation, many organisations still struggle to establish them.
Build a Sustainable Coaching Culture - in Six Steps
Laura Ashley-Timms, Coaching Director at Notion Business Coaching suggests taking six steps to ensure cultural change embeds and sustains in the long term.
1. Define what coaching means to your organisation
It’s important to establish a shared understanding of what coaching actually means to your organisation. For cultural change to occur, Executive Coaching models are unlikely to be fit for purpose. Instead coaching must be able to breach the constraints of the 1-1 relationship and become the way in which people do things, everyday, not just in scheduled moments. Organisations preparing for an increasingly automated workplace will benefit from generating an inclusive approach to coaching that pervades every human interaction.
2. Know what you want it to do for you
Every organisation has its own distinct personality and is on its own unique trajectory. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Organisations need to examine what they want coaching to achieve and determine what their journey looks like; what challenges will they face and who will they meet along the way.
For organisations that are largely informed by a command and control culture, the journey to become a ‘future organisation’ may seem long and arduous. Other organisations might have a less turbulent journey but all will require a change orientation, a plan and an outcome in mind.
Incremental goals that set the foundations for bigger change are far more achievable. For example, rather than focusing on ambitious, distant goals such as preparing people for automation, an organisation would be better off focusing on more immediately achievable goals.
This may include: developing a promotable group of people able to undertake new challenges, improving engagement through better communication, driving innovation by encouraging ideas, empowering others to act.
3. Understand what would have to happen for it to land in your organisation
Ultimately creating a coaching culture is a process of change. Changing mindsets to embrace a coaching approach will not happen overnight but with a highly ‘Operational Coaching’ model such as Notion’s STAR® model, organisations will be able accelerate change by equipping their Leaders and Managers with the skills to adopt an ‘Enquiry-Led Approach’ that is easily applied, everyday, in operational settings.
4. Prove it works
Integration is of paramount importance. In step 2, an organisation identifies its strategy and asks the question - how can coaching be used as a vehicle to help us to achieve our goals? But, to achieve real cultural change it must also prove that it works. Strong alignment to specific commercial goals will help prove that coaching really does work to drive change and commercial results. Organisations that take the time to prove it - pilot, test and report genuine results, will have a greater chance of sustaining change in the long term.
5. Engage your stakeholders
Managing stakeholders expectations in any process of change is crucial. Organisations would be wise to include their cynics, leverage their heroes and repeatedly demonstrate results. If the leadership team is the biggest obstacle, it would be prudent to use the insights about the ‘future organisation’ in order to reframe what leadership means to the business. Enlisting nodal managers who can influence and encourage change will help key stakeholders recognise the necessity for change and its positive benefits.
6. Focus on sustainability
A short burst of enthusiasm for a new initiative will not be sufficient to create sustainable change. A more comprehensive programme of change is required which unites other business processes and is reflected in the common language used in the organisation.
An ‘Operational Coaching’ approach reinforced over time will help to increase the time spent ‘coaching’ from as little as 4 hours per month to 80 hours. This will significantly increase the likelihood of coaching being embedded in the psyche of the organisation.
Back to the Future...
An automated organisation is likely to reduce the number of people employed on a permanent basis but increase the number of relationships people have. Consequently, reducing the number of humans in the workplace, will increase rather than lessen, the need for effective human relationships.
By starting to create a sustainable coaching culture today, organisations will prepare their people for the organisations of tomorrow.
Notion is a global expert in behaviour change. For more information about how we can help your organisation to start creating a ‘future smart’ sustainable coaching culture, click on the button below or call us for an informal chat on +44 (0) 1926 889 885.
