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  Otherwise laziness will understandably kick in, soon rendering the system incomplete and out of date, and thus pretty much useless.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.

“Existence system” is not a phrase commonly known or used in English.  A Google search for it in quotes yields a paltry 7,470 results and none of the first few pages of results contain the meaning I intend to share here, so let’s look at the phrase newly.

Said another way, I mean: systems for keeping things in existence*.  We all know the phrase, “out of sight, out of mind”, right?  Keeping something in existence means keeping it present over time: it is the antithesis of letting something fall through the cracks. Many people don’t need an existence system: it is easy to remember the big things like going to work on Monday morning and brushing the teeth at night.  If those are your only responsibilities in a typical week, you really don’t need to check in with a day planner first thing in the morning.  And if you should happen to forget Aunt Pam’s birthday, well, she’ll probably understand.

But if you’re Up To Something, something that demands more of you than getting through a regular work schedule and maintaining basic hygiene, then an existence system is quickly relevant.  When you are Up To Something there are actions to take, promises to keep, appointments to attend and so on, and each thing has its place in time.  Letting one of these things slip through the cracks is counterproductive, and so staying present to all of them is very useful.

Coaches are almost invariably coaching people who are Up To Something.  Thus, coaches themselves are almost invariably Up To Something.  Existence systems become doubly relevant in the coaching profession.  What is your existence system?  How about your clients’?  Do they ever intersect?

Next: What makes an existence system great?

*You probably know of many existence systems, even if you’ve never called them by that name.  PDA’s, MS Outlook, day planners, Google Calendars, a cell phone that beeps at you 2 minutes before you’re supposed to hop onto that conference call… these are all examples of systems to keep you present to what’s going on and when.

It must be said: the CoachAccountable team loves the frank self-assessment. Because we started this from nothing and fuel ourselves almost exclusively on excitement and possibility, we find it helpful every 6 months or so to take a good hard look at the central reasons why we are doing this. Now that we’ve launched and we have some big new feature releases only a few days away, we wanted to make sure that all of our next actions are aligned and focused on the right path. We soul searched. We revisited dusty old versions of business plans, USPs (unique selling propositions), tag lines and group emails harking back to the lonely era of B.B. (Before Beta.) Against the dramatic backdrop of Midwest summer thunderstorms, we reflected deeply on lessons learned.

Then we threw all that out the window and took a good look at where we are now, what is important to us, what feels right in our guts and what drives us to show up and work hard every day. Here’s the mini-manifesto that we came up with, illustrating the mindset we want to come from as we work to make CoachAccountable a truly great resource for coaches and their clients:

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Why We Exist:

At CoachAccountable, we are an ally to the coaching community.

We strive for the constant improvement of the coaching experience for both coaches and their clients.

We are committed to making coaching and coaches more accepted, accessible and enticing to the general public.

What We Do:

We are creating versatile web-based resources for both coaches and clients that empower their relationships.

We add value by providing an interactive and tangible framework that facilitates growth and tracks progress.

How We Do It:

First and foremost, we are building this system for people.

By prioritizing the coachee experience [meaning that we can stand in the shoes of a coaching client and authentically see things from their perspective], we build tools that most effectively help people realize their goals.

By collaborating with our coach customers, we support and grow their businesses.

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So, what do you think? Does it strike any chords? Raise any concerns? Are we missing the mark or right on target? You are the person that we are trying to serve. Please let us know your thoughts.

P.S. There is some really good stuff launching very soon in CoachAccountable. Sneak peek: importing Outlook, iCal and Google calendars, online scheduling, and our Affiliate program. I, personally, am so excited that I can’t stop doing classic 1980’s dance moves such as the Roger Rabbit, the Lawn Mower and the Cabbage Patch.

P.P.S. Since we are laying ourselves bare in this post, full team disclosure: Rob has mastered the Moonwalk and is passable at the Running Man. John has always been something of a savant at Dance Dance Revolution.

Yesterday I wrote a piece about transparency of coaching, or how accessible the coaching industry is (or is not) to the more general public.  Now I want to take a look at transparency in coaching, or said another way, how easy it is for a client to perceive the progress and process over time.

Clearly we can agree that any coach worth their salt will be providing perceptible value for their client whenever they are interfacing.  It’s industry standard, you could say, that during a coaching session a client is realizing valuable insights, solid direction, and a more or less immediate experience that “yes, I am more clear/focused/ready for what’s next”.   But what about such clarity over the duration of the coaching engagement, whether weeks, months or years?

In my experiences with being coached I’ve seldom had, at the end of the coaching, a crystal clear view of where I had been and how far I’d come (let alone at any point during!).  I knew I’d gotten value, I just couldn’t easily tell you how much.  Our team’s collective experience with being coached suggests that a coach who can (and does!) provide a client with a comprehensive view of what was accomplished during the relationship is an exception, not the rule.  Failing that, we as clients are left with a collection of emails, printed worksheets, and hastily scribbled notes, and it’s up to us to keep it all straight and organized.

Much of CoachAccountable was designed with just that in mind.  From experience, I assert that clients are much more present to value they have gotten/are getting when the course of the whole relationship is easy to see, because keeping the coaching process and progress transparent at all times keeps clients having clear sense of ongoing accomplishment.  Would you agree?

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.

This past weekend I participated in a course focused on personal development, and it was the first time doing so since four and a half years ago.  It was in that course way back when that I first heard of the word “coaching” applied to anything outside of the sports world and I had never seen anything like it. Back then, it didn’t compute for me how person A (who knew next to nothing about person B) could offer person B tremendously powerful insights into person B’s life.  I don’t think it computed for many people at the start, but at the end we participants constituted 100 or so more people who had experienced coaching in this new sense of the word and seen it work wonders.

It’s easy for me to get lost in a sea of code and to-dos while building CoachAccountable, so it’s easy to lose track of what I’m building it for.  The good dose of coaching in action that I experienced this past weekend really has my thoughts and actions realigned towards supporting you guys, the coaches, in making more of that magic happen.

I might wonder if I’m the only one who can lose sight of the value of coaching while working on coaching, but I’m pretty sure I’m not.  When you’re making your coaching business work, how do you stay in touch with whatever it is about actual coaching that lights you up?  Are you in touch with it right now?

The four of us had a most excellent experience this weekend, and that was attending the Big Omaha conference: a gathering of entrepreneurial-minded tech folk.  Attendance covered the gamut from established thought leaders in the field to freelancers who just quit their job eager to create something themselves.

As a group of creatives on the verge of launching our first web app, we felt right at home.

Jeffrey Kalmikoff’s presentation on transparency was a real hit with all of us.   He posited the big question: “what does it take to be so genuine and authentically connected with your customers that you could screw up big time and have them still love you?”  There are a couple of things that  jumped out at me when looking at that:

• Never trying to appear as though you are something you are not. We’ve been a team of only 3 or 4 for a while now, but Lord knows the earliest drafts of our design agency website tried to pass us off as big and corporate.  Turns out we never needed to be: appearing big and deeply established never got us a job, being talented, commited and reliable did.
• Being accessible. Allowing a two-way rapport with customers, with emphasis on the two-way: if our customers take the time to give us feedback or comments, we owe it to them to give a thoughtful reply.
• Publicly owning up to mistakes. Nothing makes failure on someone’s part more painful than having it come with some song and dance trying to hide or justify the problem.  Being open and responsible about mistakes can turn an “us-vs-them” situation into a collaborative community effort to work out a resolution.

It may go without saying given all the above, but for the record I’ll say it plain:

We want to have that kind of relationship with the Coaching community.

While sitting out at the wine tasting rap party at the Big Omaha we came up with a few ideas on how to cultivate just that.  Stay tuned.  In the mean time I invite you to do the same: take a little time sitting outdoors (possibly with a glass of wine) and think about how you could foster such relationship with your clients and the communities you serve.  I’d love to hear what you come up with.

I am not a coach. I am a designer and entrepreneur currently building a web application for professional coaches.  So what do I know about coaching and the web?  I have spent the better part of the last year studying the coaching industry, the resources and websites for coaches online and all the latest trends and technology emerging on the Internet. That, and I have been searching for a coach for myself so I have some insight about what your potential clients may be thinking.

Psst. They may be thinking that many coaches out there need to work on their Internet skills, pronto.

Some of you may be understandably reluctant about this. In the past, being web savvy was the strict domain of IT professionals. No more, my friends. There is a widespread movement among web designers and developers to employ good design and drastically improve user experience. Google hasn’t just given us dizzying search capabilities, but also online calendars, document creation and sharing, photo albums and personalized news. Scores of new web applications are being launched each week to fit every niche need imaginable.  So what does this computer programming revolution have to do with your coaching business? Everything.

Believe it or not, devoting some time to exploring new web technology can drastically simplify your life. It can make you a more effective coach. And unless you have a never-ending stream of referred clients pounding down your door, the success of your business depends on it.

In our next 4 posts, we have some very specific ideas about how the internet can improve your coaching business along with some great resources for you to check out. Subscribe to our RSS feed or come back in a few days for the latest installment.

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!