My goal is to help you be successful in navigating disruptive change while uniting your team around important strategic decisions. One of the ways I do this is by serving as your personal strategy coach.
Coaching sessions can be in person or via video call and typically last one hour. Depending on the dynamics of the business, we can meet weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Questions we might discuss include:
What disruptive changes are you dealing with?
What are the critical strategic decisions that must be made?
What's the best way to make those decisions?
How do we involve your team in the process so that they take joint ownership of the decisions?
What issues are you facing in implementing strategic decisions?
What other hard situations or choices are you facing and how can your faith and your strategy help guide you through?
What Makes Me an Effective Coach?
Good coaches, whether in business or sports, share a few common characteristics:
Knowledge: Good coaches never stop learning. Most importantly, good coaches are good at sharing their knowledge with others. I read 20+ business books each year as well as various publications and blogs. I have written several business books and hundreds of columns sharing what I know. I have also taught college and high school classes, have been invited to guest lecture at top business schools, and have been a sought out conference speaker. But I'm best at sharing knowledge one-on-one, where I can apply my knowledge to my clients' specific situation and need.
Experience: Like anything, good coaches improve through practice and many of the best first learned what they coach by excelling in their "sport," usually under other excellent coaches. My pre-coaching career included 25 years working for mature medium-sized and large corporations, where I was blessed with several excellent bosses and mentors. The bulk of that experience was in product development and strategy, roles that touched every aspect of corporate operations. I have also been co-founder of a handful of small startups, so I have personally worked through many kinds of disruptive changes throughout the entire lifecycle of many types of businesses. I have worked in multiple industries and coached clients in even more. As a consultant I have coached dozens of business leaders one-on-one, helping them thrive in the midst of various business challenges.
Awareness: A good coach excels at what is often called "situational awareness." They understand what is going on, what it will take to succeed, and the abilities of their individual players. As a strategy coach, three of my greatest strengths are asking great questions, listening, and reading the environment. My coaching clients deeply understand much more than I ever will about their organization and the current situation. My questions often help them put into words what before might have only been a nagging feeling. Once we both understand the situation, we can work together to "sketch up a winning play."
A Playbook: Over the years, a good sports coach will collect various skills, drills, and plays that help their players and teams succeed. Throughout my career, I have collected a wide array of frameworks and tools that I can selectively introduce into coaching discussions to help answer hard questions or make hard decisions.
Vision: Good coaches see beyond the present reality. They sense potential and project forward to what could be. Envisioning the future, and understanding what it takes to get there, has been a defining element of my career. Early in my career, I saw the potential for microprocessors and personal computers before they were common and I worked to bring digital innovation into small corners of the defense, nuclear power, and telecom industries. Later I was an early advocate of how the Internet would disrupt industries and co-founded an early web development firm to help businesses do so. In the middle of my career, I recognized the disruptive power of wireless technology and wrote a book (before the iPhone) to help businesses capture the power of these new innovations. For more than a decade I have been reporting the coming of the "connected intelligence" revolution that will again disrupt industries, which we now see happening with artificial intelligence, 5G networks, and cloud computing. On a more focused scale, I often spot the trends and opportunities for my clients that can help take them to the next level.
Passion: Good coaches are as passionate about winning as their players are. In my work, winning isn't always just measured by numbers on a scoreboard. I am passionate about helping you succeed in business, but I'm just as passionate about helping you grow as a leader and as a child of God.
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