At the same time, the CoachAccountable team is facing some exciting developments with our primary business, Playground Creative. Thus, we have less time and financial resources to work on CoachAccountable, which has always been an unfunded labor of love.

So what does this mean for our users? Well, if you already have an account, you will be able to use the system for free from now on. However, we aren’t making any guarantees about the system so use is at your own risk. This is the nature of Beta. Don’t get us wrong – we’ll still maintain the same level of security and all the same features will be available. We just won’t necessarily respond to support requests within 24 hours and any updates or bug fixes are solely at our discretion.

I’d like to extend our deepest gratitude to everyone who has supported us this far, provided feedback, told a friend or otherwise has participated in CoachAccountable up to this point. It’s been such a great journey – and we’re sure that it’s not over. We are just exploring options for where to take this baby.

If you don’t currently have an account but would like one or you have any questions about what’s happening with CoachAccountable, shoot us an email at support at coachaccountable dot com.

Everyone has his or her own relationship to existence systems. For example, one can overall be empowered by them, resistant to them, or indifferent/oblivious to needing such things (I’m proud to say I’ve graduated from that third category).   Most coaches will find, among their clients, that there are relationships to existence systems that are all across the board.  A coach working with a client who is already a master of utilizing an existence system has a big leg up in the process.  During my year as a coach, it felt sometimes like one of my responsibilities was to BE the existence system for my coachees (“How did you do with those four actions you created last week?”  Pause.  “Umm… can you tell me what were they again?”).

Causing your clients to be master of their own existence systems is a huge win.  It enhances their ability to use your coaching to produce results.  When you don’t need to deal regularly with the grunt work called “managing what fell through the cracks” there is more time to do the real work.

It is precisely this insight from which CoachAccountable was conceived.  It’s designed to be an easy-to-use, enjoyable existence system for your clients, one that perfectly fits into your coaching relationship, and you get to give it to them.  Moreover, it is uniquely designed to allow your interaction and oversight as coach: it allows you to closely support them in being masterful with existence systems.  What would it be like if your clients never had any actions or appointments fall through the cracks?

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.

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.

Calendar Imports! Regardless of your account type, you can now import your current Outlook, iCal, Google and other calendars into CoachAccountable. Go to your Calendar and click on the “Import Calendar” button an the bottom of the mini-calendar view. There is inline help there to quickly walk you through the process. You can also export iCal using a private data feed URL. We are exploring other sync options and will keep you posted. Also coming up shortly: day, week and agenda views.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.