I launched CoachAccountable in September 2012.  I’d like to share a funny thing that happens when a software product has been around and been evolving for a good long while:

What you add in the later years is almost certainly less important than what you added in earlier years.

And this of course makes sense when you stop to think about it: amid continuous work (and assuming a competent and coherent vision for the product), you will prioritize and complete whatever matters most in the moment.  Meaning the next feature you ship will matter less.

Again, and again, and again.

After a decade plus of this, whatever remains to add is pretty niche: of use to only a rather small minority, or of increasingly narrow marginal benefit, or both¹.

There are more whiz-bang features that fall under the banner of being more “advanced”, and those have a certain sizzle!  We like what’s new, and what’s fancy.  Many of my long-term customers like to ask me what’s new or what’s coming in CA.  These days when they do, I ask ’em if they’ve played with any of the features of Version 5.1, released 18 months ago.  Almost 100% of the time the answer is no.  And not because those features wouldn’t be useful; it’s a failure of awareness.  When I talk ’em through those features, they usually land as valuable new goodies worth at least trying out.

So pursuing more whiz-bang features is sort of a dead end at this stage.  Running now contrary to my 12-year-old missive titled Ode to Squeaky Wheels, where in the early days their feedback was invaluable to push the platform to be ever better, the squeaky wheels these days generally want the platform to go down niche paths; paths that would be super great (or at least handy) for their needs, but that nevertheless stray from the core of what CA is meant to do and already does well².

It is that core of what CA is meant to do that I find worth re-focusing on.  These are the raison d’être for this platform, and for good reason!  Many other “coaching” platforms are comprised largely of commodity business management tools (think scheduling, invoicing, signing documents, etc.) with the word “coaching” slapped on it.  They’ll save you clicks running admin, but they won’t materially influence the results your clients ultimately get working with you.

CoachAccountable is different.  It is deliberately built around how your clients show up and get results working with you.

As I wrote last week in The CoachAccountable Perspective (“More than Just Conversations“), the coaching industry and training programs largely consider your job to be little more than having good conversations.  Yet the experience of being coached CAN (and should!) include much more, namely: elements that support real execution and better outcomes.

Without a proper system, those elements are cumbersome and hard to manage.  But with a proper system, it’s another story entirely.

CoachAccountable is that system.

Its foundation consists of four straightforward (but powerful) tools:

• Action Plans for intentional execution
• Metrics to measure and track what matters
• Session Notes to capture and re-presence the key insights
• Worksheets to cause more than passive consumption

They are not whiz-bang features.  They are not complicated to set up.  They simply turn what was cumbersome and impractical into something elegant and practical.

Skillfully weaving these basics into your style will do more for your clients’ results, and thus your efficacy as a coach, than the pursuit of the “fancy” or “advanced”.