Yesterday I distinguished the oddly phrased concept “existence system”, which unravels to mean “a system for keeping things in existence”.   Or put another way: a system for managing details in life and staying on top your commitments.  Today I want to speculate on the defining features that make such systems really great.  In the years since I first became acquainted with the notion “existence system” (including an initial bout of resistance to having my life chained to anything of the sort), I’ve experienced plenty of what does and does not work for me, and here are the unifying gems I’ve found:

Easy or Automatic Data Entry

By “data” here I mean the details of whatever you need to keep in existence: appointments, meetings, outings, all of it.  If it’s all gotta go in (and it does all gotta go in, if you want to be able to say with confidence whether or not you’re free next Wednesday at 11:00am for one hour) it better be super easy and fast to do so.  Otherwise laziness will understandably kick in, soon rendering the system incomplete and out of date, and thus pretty much useless.

Automatic Reminders

One can be expected to check in with a schedule only so often, and every half hour on the half hour isn’t likely.  The ability to set reminders for key things and have the system alert you automatically at the right time is a fantastic tool to make sure you make every engagement, and on time to boot.

A pleasure to use

This goes beyond just ease of data entry.  It makes such a difference to have the entire experience be pleasant.  I say that, by default, you and I are not wired to enjoy using existence systems (it’s much easier to just wing it day to day, right?).   Intuitive, pretty, and even fun to use… these sorts of things collectively constitute a spoonful of sugar to help the [responsibility] medicine go down.

How does your existence system rate in these three areas?  Furthermore, do you know how the systems you clients use rate?  When keeping others on task as coaches so often do for their clients, one easy way to make gains may simply be to get them interested in using an existence system that serves them better.

Next: Using existence systems to cause client success.

One of the things I’ve run into time and time again during the course of CoachAccountable’s development is having to explain coaching (in the personal development sense) to friends who have never heard the word used outside the sports context.  Even despite many opportunities to practice giving my explanation, I seldom have it resonate with my listener.  The best response I can usually hope for goes something along the lines of “Ah, that sounds kinda cool for those people that need that.”

Those people that need that.

People generally understand that athletes do well to have someone who is not them looking at how they’re playing and offering guidance from an external perspective.  To score more points and win the big game, this makes perfect sense to most people.  But somehow when you apply that same concept to living one’s dreams, career advancement, and quality of life the concept goes sour in people’s minds.  Somehow a concept that enjoys “of-course-you-do-that-to-be-the-best” status in sports becomes far less obvious when applied to the grander scope of life.

What if we consider how transparency of coaching impacts this?

Coach/client privacy is a very important consideration of any coaching relationship, and it should be.  Being coached on the quality of your romantic relationships is much more personal than how many steps to take towards the basket for a layup.  A candid look at how you’ve been being with your team at work hits much closer to home than how many laps you ran during warm up yesterday.

So generally speaking, what happens in a coaching relationship stays in a coaching relationship.  An unintended consequence of this is that coaching (as we know it) remains relatively shrouded in mystery to the general public.   Consider this logical loop:

• The only way to know how coaching works is to experience coaching.
• The only way to experience coaching is by knowing well enough to choose to get coaching.
• The only way to know well enough to choose coaching is by knowing how coaching works.

Is this strictly true?  Of course not.  But it’s true enough to be interesting and worth finding ways to circumvent.  To that end, we’re throwing our hat into the ring.  As part of our effort to champion the benefits of coaching we’re going to get coached, and we’re doing it publicly.  We’ll use the CoachAccountable platform as a showcase of our progress (AND process).

Addressing transparency is obviously not a silver bullet for bringing coaching to a more mainstream understanding and interest.  But it is an interesting avenue to pursue with many possibilities.

I am a hacker.  (“Hacker” in the sense of programmers who really love to create things in code, NOT people trying to break into the CIA)   It is said in hacker circles (specifically in several essays by Paul Graham) that the best software is that which hackers write to scratch their own itch.   Why is that?  Because they are their own users.  It is the rare and magical combination in software development of (1) knowing exactly what is needed and (2) being able to create it.  If anything is cumbersome or annoying, they can fix it.  If a little shortcut is an obvious time saver, they can put it in.

One of the reasons we are looking for a coach is to position CoachAccountable more like that kind of software: built by and for the people who use it.  We want the regular experience of being clients in our system, using it like your clients will use it, and being in constant contact with the coach’s user perspective.  We’re going to expand on what we like and tweak/fix/scrap what we don’t.  We designed the sessions and file sharing features of CoachAccountable as an answer to what I would have used when I had between 4 and 8 coachees during my year in the Team Management and Leadership Program.  I’ve since graduated from that program, so there’s a lot more we can do to get into the shoes of our users.

When we nail it for ourselves, we nail it for a lot of people.

The CoachAccountable team is looking for a business coach. We have three reasons for this: a deeper understanding of the coach-client relationship, a chance to use the CA system firsthand for ourselves, and – obviously – to grow our business!

We also want to do it publicly.  When we describe CoachAccountable to our friends, family members and acquaintances, most of them have no real idea what coaching is all about. “Is it like therapy? Having a personal assistant? Would a coach help me?” are all common questions. We think it would be very cool and instructive to offer ourselves up as public examples of the experience and benefits of coaching.

Here’s the deal: There are 4 of us on the team. We can be coached individually or as a group. We all have varying degrees of experience with coaching and we are positive and motivated. We want to work with the CA system. We haven’t decided how to publicize our coaching experience yet; it’s probably better to discuss that with our coach first.

We have spent much of the last year building CoachAccountable from scratch, so we don’t have a lot of money. We do, however, have a lot of experience in the realm of graphic and web design, development and advertising. In exchange for coaching, we will barter for services and/or create a kick-ass marketing campaign with you that will rock your business. If you are interested in discussing this opportunity in more detail, give me a shout at lee@coachaccountable.com. If you know someone who may be interested, please forward this to them. Thanks!

UPDATE: We have found our coach(es)! Stay tuned for more details…

Can we get a “woot woot”? Today we successfully completed Beta and launched to the public!

Building this fabulous application has been a long, fascinating and (usually) fun journey. And this is just the beginning. As my mama woould say, “There’s no rest for the wicked.” We are working out the technical details for our Affiliate program and should be launching that soon. We are working on some new solutions to some of our Beta coaches’ feedback. We are also working on a major revamp of the Calendar so that it will sync with your other calendars and will feature online scheduling for Premium accounts. Whew!

We’d like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all of our Beta coaches who tested the system and got their clients on board and gave us such great feedback and positive support.  You guys totally rock! We couldn’t have done it without you.

We have officially been in Beta for a few weeks now and are super excited about how things are progressing. We have a great group of Beta users and we’ve just sent out our first questionnaire so we should have a solid range of feedback to begin our next development phase next week. Some things that will be updated include time zones and currencies so the system will be useful worldwide. Also, we will be building out new features on the calendar and working to make CoachAccountable sync with a few other popular systems. We will keep you posted as new features arise.

On a different note, we have been brainstorming ways to add more value for the coaching community at large. We aren’t professional coaches, so we won’t presume to tell you anything about being a coach or how to coach. However, one thing that we know pretty well is web technology, including applications, social networking, and future trends. We thought we could provide some tips and tutorials for coaches on improving their business with technology. Keep checking back here to see what we find. Also, if you have any questions about technology at all (from super basic to advanced or even theoretical) please just ask! If you want to know, I’m sure there are others out there with the same issue. We would love to find the answer. Cheers!