The CoachAccountable Blog

This is a facet of functionality that I’ve been deliberately dragging my feet on for a while.

The vision I’ve had of CoachAccountable as a collaborative workspace between client and coach has always assumed, naively perhaps, that everything should be completely open and shared between client and coach within the scope of their relationship.

So I never put much work into special controls/options to make certain content visible to coaches but not their clients, or vice-versa.  Sure, I had the ability to add private comments to stream items, but the partitioning of information between coach and client has remained willfully primitive for some time.

I figured I’d get around to it sooner or later.  As the range of usage of the system gets wider and wider, the genuine need for coaches to keep notes on their clients that were not necessarily for the clients to read was bound to come about. And then, in the last two weeks, I saw 4 requests from 4 different parties all requesting just that:

July 22nd: “I would like to keep notes about my client – future questions, reminders, etc – within my clients file – without my client seeing the note. How do I do this?”

July 22nd: “Where do you recommend the coach log their private notes on their clients?”

July 29th: “How can i save some notes and documents – related to the Coachee.. but not visible to him..”

August 6th: “Any suggestions on how to deal with the need I have of keeping a private (only I can read) journal/log about each client?”

I figured this remarkable when compared against the prior 10 months, during which the request only came up I think twice that whole time.  So it seems like today is a good day to add private journal entries and session notes.

Useful reflections on the state of coaching, visible to the coach and not to the client.

So now, for coaches, privacy is as simple as a check box when creating session notes or a journal entry.  If checked, the item will show as private in both the Notes tab and in the stream, and the client will never see it.  Similarly, as you might expect any comments made by the coach on a private item will NOT be shared with the client.

Though I’m slightly remiss to deviate from the model where everything is out and the open shared, without question the ability for coaches to have CoachAccountable as a repository for client notes WITHOUT having them all shared with clients has some seriously useful applications.

All in all a good day of work to take CoachAccountable one degree further in its versatility.  My thanks go out to the four coaches who, unwittingly in concert, tuned me into the importance of this.

One of the things technology is generally useful for is to automate a lot of grunt work and thus free up time for people, and CoachAccountable is no different in this regard.

Since the launch of the site redesign back in April, I’ve had a signature website “Coming Soon” notice on an illustrative video about how CoachAccountable helps to scale up one’s coaching practice.  “Soon” for things like this is a standard lie in the web world, and alas amid all the travel I took nearly 3 months to finally get that video together (in my defense, I was traveling through all of Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal, UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Italy during that time).

But I knew I’d get to it eventually.  I cooked up the script for it in haste back in mid-April, during the 36 hour window I had prior to my appointment at a proper sound studio to do the recordings.  With proper narration all done it was but a matter of time before I could animate it, and whilst living in Crete I found that time.

Anecdotes surrounding its creation aside, the video gives a nice illustration of the difficulty of scaling up one-to-one coaching, and how CoachAccountable can help.

Coach more people in the same amount of hours, or the same amount of people in fewer hours.  I think it’s a juicy win.

Enjoy!

Literally since the 5th day after CoachAccountable’s public release back at the end of last August, I’ve received slow yet steady stream of inquiries regarding the ability to house multiple coaches under a single account.  The specific needs and desires expressed in each of these inquiries have varied, but all point to a real need for coaching software to manage things at a team (or organizational) level with administrative oversight.

My response in private emails or telephone conversations has been to allude to a forthcoming “Enterprise Edition” of CoachAccountable, but first things first: there is to perfect the supporting structures for the fundamental building block in all this, the coach-client relationship.

Things are close enough now to that point that it makes sense for me to publicly announce the plan for supporting teams of coaches at the organizational level.

If you’re interested in CoachAccountable for teams, check it out.

Similar to the tweaks to make Actions better, I’ve added a few bits to improve Appointment scheduling as well.

Exceptions to scheduling availability

As coach you can set up your typical availability for your clients to schedule themselves into your calendar, but what about the occasional day or week off?  Sure, appointments scheduled by clients are just pending requests, subject to your approval, but missing was a way to block off bits of time before requests for not-actually-available dates were made.

Now you can add as many exceptions to your upcoming availability as necessary, and CoachAccountable will subtract those out from the scheduling options presented to your clients:

To make sure that you’ve got everything setup correctly regarding your availability (and exceptions thereto), you can now preview the options that your clients will see when they go in to schedule themselves:

See the options available for a given  appointment just as your client would.

Time zone coordination in scheduling

When scheduling an appointment with a client in a different time zone, a coach can see immediately what a given appointment time will be in that client’s time zone.  Most handy to avoid confusion to the tune of “is that in your time zone, or mine?”

As you change the time, the client time changes with it.

Scheduling a regular sequence of appointments

Often times you have a regular weekly call with a given client.  If you know it’s going to be the same for several weeks to come, you can now schedule a sequence with just a few clicks:

Just a click and the option to schedule a regular series appears.

And there you have it!  Just a few improvements to make appointment scheduling easier for you.

I’ve added a number of improvements to Actions lately, touching on each of ease-of-use, better collaborative communication, and more visually satisfying.

Scheduling for clients in different time zones.

Throughout CoachAccountable, times are generally in the eye of the beholder.  Meaning, for example, that if you as coach specify an action do be done at 7:00pm, that’s in your time zone, and CoachAccountable will convert it to your client’s time zone as needed.

Now, when the client’s time zone is different from yours, CoachAccountable provides you with a real-time display of what time time is implied for your client:

As you change the time, the client time changes with it.

Comments and Notifications for New Actions

Sometimes there’s just a little more to an action than what fits in a “to-do list style one-liner”.  Extra comments including specifics, the recommended approach, or even a little bit of motivating context are often quite useful.  Now when creating actions these can be added right in with the action itself.

Sometimes a few extra clarifying bits make all the difference.

Beyond that, a notification of the new action can be sent to the client by ticking a check box.  (Like before, unless turned off notifications are always sent to the coach whenever a client creates a new action.)  The notice conveniently includes the action, the due date, and any comments added by the coach.  While I was at it, I made comments render in a more visually meaningful way:

The head shot of the coach makes the message a little more personal, thus has the client take the assignment a little more to heart.

Marking Actions Complete

The window for marking an action complete got a little bit of an esthetic boost.  After all, the happy happening of marking something done deserves a big, pretty display.

Finally, when an action is marked complete a tidy message swoops in to summarize its timeliness.  (The way it flies in and out of view looks really sharp so long as you’re using a modern browser–essentially anything but IE9 or older.)

Even if it’s from a computer, the little pat on the back is welcome.

So those are the recent improvements to actions.  Already with some very unscientific observations I can say that the communication bits of comments and notifications make actions a little more real for clients to take on, and I can only assume that the little “action complete, hooray!” message makes marking things complete just a smidge more gratifying for clients.  (Ah, and for sure as I travel around the world, it’s rather nice to know what time in my clients’ time zones I am actually scheduling actions for!)

Enjoy!

I got a note recently which utterly made my day.  It was sent as a response from one of the lessons in the Coaching With Software course:

Hi John!

First, I want to let you know that reading and pondering the articles you’ve sent has forced me to think differently about what my business really needs to provide potential clients. Years ago, I hired an executive coach to help me be accountable. Looking back, what their service ultimately became was an endless stream of worthless platitudes. They sounded and felt good but had absolutely no value or substance to help me move my business forward and hold me accountable. There was absolutely no meat just a bunch of feel good fluff that I was paying for on a weekly basis!!!

My coaching business has been on hold, for several years, because I could not see any inherent value that could be provided to potential clients.  You have inspired me to think differently and therefore, have decided to move forward again.  I am currently working on the details necessary to put my former coaching practice back in place. I have decided to use CoachAccountable as the vehicle to help me accomplish this.

You will hear back from in a couple of weeks once I have things back in place to support my coaching practice.

Thank you for inspiring me to take action!!!

Jack

I think Jack really gets to the heart of the hangup many have with coaching: all too commonly, it just boils down to so many feelgood platitudes.

As coaches we’re all pretty well adept at being a top-shelf cheerleader for the people we coach.  That sort of ability, to lift up and motivate others with our words, is neigh on a requisite of the practice.  But to truly have our coaching be worth taking seriously (not to mention worth coming back for), making our coachees feel good has to be balanced with actual lasting results beyond our interactions.  It has to contain structure, concrete actions to be taken, sincere follow through with those actions, and the courage to actually measure the results and respond accordingly.  Ultimately, it has to be results-based.

The degree to which the coaching industry is taken seriously depends on it.

To have CoachAccountable be recognized as a tool for giving those sorts of lasting results through structure and accountability is among the most important praise it could receive.  Thanks for the kudos, Jack.

This one’s a guest post by the venerated, bonified CoachAccountable customer #1, Dr. John Kenworthy.

During our visit a few months ago in Singapore, Dr. John mentioned that I gave him a lot of his free time back.  As I continue along my path of telling the story of CoachAccountable as being a win waiting to happen for your typical results-focused coach, I decided to ask Dr. John if he’d care to share with the class more precisely about that time he has saved.

His willingness to do so was generously enthusiastic, and his account was nothing short of remarkable.  I told him his title of saving 100 days of time this year might be regarded as a bit sensationalist.  He has assured me he’s ready to duke it out in any form of comment debate that ensues, so feel free to weigh in below with any skepticism and/or curiosity you have.

Take it away, Dr. John.

How CoachAccountable is giving me 100 extra days this year

Anyone reading this has likely seen my name on a few comments on John’s blog, and it is true that I am one of (if not the) biggest fans of CoachAccountable.

And you may be thinking that the attention grabbing headline is hype, so let me explain. But first let me set the record straight: I am not John Larson’s lacky, nor am I employed by him in any way… I am a customer, and no, I don’t get freebies (though I do volunteer to Guinea Pig new features happily).

When John and Tracy visited in Singapore I told him that CA saved me 20 hours a week.  He automatically assumed I said per month[JOHN L.: Actually, I thought he meant in total.  Call me pessimistically humble.], and was rather taken aback when I insisted it saves me, on average 20 hours a week. So, firstly for John, I slightly miscalculated, it’s just 19 hours a week.

John asked me to write something for the blog, so I thought that I should share with you how using CA saves me 19 hours a week, and hence gives me 100 ‘free’ days a year (based on 9 hour working days).

Where CA saves the most time for me is in what it excels over: Excel and a CRM system.

On-boarding a new client

(I typically take on 5 new clients in a month).

Previously: I set them up on my CRM, created an Excel sheet (from a template I use) to track their sessions, brief summary of what we did, dates and so on. I would send them a personalised agreement by email, get their personal workbook printed and use that in our first session so they knew what they were in for, their own reviews and of course, their own objectives tracking.

With CA: I set them up in CA, send a template worksheet agreement and share the workbook elements they need through files.

Time saved: 50 minutes per client

Coaching Sessions

(I typically have 20 clients on-going and two monthly sessions each)

Previously: Send an email with link to google form for their review from the previous session, await response and add data to their individual client master spreadsheet. Just prior to the session, interrogate my CRM and Excel sheet for previous session information to review, find tools or templates I plan on using. During the sessions itself, I have already saved a huge amount of time by using a LiveScribe pen to record notes – I do not transpose, but share the LiveScribe pdf (now in Evernote) with the client – this is linked to their CRM record to easily find it for the next pre-session prep. Set agreed tasks for coming week, set reminders for self for ‘nagging’ email task list. Assign homework, locate and send, set reminders for ‘nagging.’

With CA: Send a worksheet template “review” three days before the session with a deadline. Review stream and actions in CA. During web-based session (about 75% of my work now) I take notes in a session template in CA during the session. For an in-person session I use the Livescribe pen as above, but now embed the Livescribe document inside the session notes – which is actually an additional step in CA (and hence costs time, but not much). Actions (tasks) set on CA, homework (usually worksheets and files) shared during session on web, and after for and in-person session.

Time saved: Web coaching – 115 minutes, in person coaching – 50 minutes. Most of this from assigning actions and homework and setting reminders for self to ‘follow up’ (aka nag) clients – plus of course, actually following up between sessions.

Ad –hoc check-ins

(I have about 20 of these per month, I might initiate to chase a client, or they might reach me for something they need right now.)

Previously: Search the CRM, follow appropriate links to latest notes, check spreadsheet record, update CRM and spreadsheet post call. Assign follow up task in CRM.

With CA: Find client in dashboard, check stream and actions.

Time saved: Average 15 minutes per check-in

One caveat though. I have not counted the hours I have spent in setting my CA system up with the templates – that has been about 50 hours of work.

So what do I do with that 100 days??

Well, I finally finished my book that’s been ‘almost’ for 2 years in January. And I’m writing the next one now.

And, since ‘Courses’ went live, I have now transferred my own Caddy training certification course to the system, which has now enabled me to go global with the programme. And I’m actually using the Courses feature to automatically do the on-boarding, follow up and sending ‘mini’ modules to my clients. That’s not saving me time by the way, but it is expanding my business and means I can actually go on holiday and still be looking after my clients whilst I’m on the beach.

So John, if you can get CA to find the clients and sell to them as well, and do the coaching sessions for me, I could retire. :)

A few weeks ago I got a request from one of the coaches on CoachAccountable:

I set myself up as a client and am essentially coaching myself.  I setup metrics to daily enter things from productivity level to weight lost.  I wondered if there was a way to have ourselves in the system but have it not count against our total clients?  It has helped me better understand how to use the tool with clients but as I get closer to ten clients I hate to have to pay for the higher tier.  Is there already a way to use the tool for ourselves or is this a possibility in the future?

At first I didn’t give this request much heed: doing extra coding and adding complexity to the system to have it track which client is technically the coach him or herself didn’t seem appealing, just to accommodate the (overall) rare event that a coach coaching themselves would push them over the threshold of the next subscription level.

But then I meditated on it, quite literally.

During some of my time in silence in a meditation course at the Kopan Monestary in Nepal I mused how good an idea it truly was, to encourage coaches to coach themselves within the system.  Even my biggest fan commented back in February how important doing this was for appreciating how useful the system is is from a client perspective.

Indeed, this freebie client would encourage something that is very much to be encouraged.  So after coming down from the mountain (again, quite literally), I added this as quickly as my travel schedule and Nepalese internet connections would allow.

Now when you add a new client whose email address matches your own, a quick little popup will give you the option to set that client as your “this is me coaching myself” client.  It’s your freebie client, and if you take CoachAccountable up on the offer, the system will offer to setup a few things to get you started, whichever bits you like.

A few quick steps give you the option to set up a few things, each of which are designed to help you get familiar with the system.

It’s a fine experience of the system early on, allowing a coach to see firsthand what it’s going to be like to work through actions, worksheet assignments, and tracking Metrics in CoachAccountable.  This is an important thing, considering that a coach trying CoachAccountable is, essentially, contemplating setting up his or her own clients for the very same experience.

My thanks go out to the coach whose inquiry sparked such inspired thought!

Hot of the heels of the release of in-system messaging within CoachAccountable, I’ve already had a number of requests that it be possible to send a message to some or all clients at once.

I never meant for CoachAccountable to serve as anything resembling a email broadcast platform, but when I see what a natural fit it is to build upon the in-system messaging (with all of it’s perks) I see this as a rather nice fit after all.

You can personalize your bulk message by inserting your client’s name and a magic login link.

In the wake of the two substantial outages earlier during my 10 days offline (I tell you, nothing takes away the peace of mind feeling from a meditation course quite like learning that your server was offline for a total of 11 hours while you were away), I see now that there is to again upgrade CoachAccountable’s hosting setup.

During the outages, the VPS (stands for “Virtual Private Server”) environment suffered from the impacts of other tenants on the machine.  Between downtime and occasionally VERY SLOW performance, I’m clear that this mission critical application for a growing number of coaches is no longer suitable for that kind of vulnerability (indeed, things were simpler when I had more like four customers!).

To that end, CoachAccountable has now just been moved to its new home: a fully dedicated server with a quad core processor, 8GB of memory, and a zippy SSD hard drive.

My sincerest apologies to those coaches (and their clients) who were affected by the outage times earlier this month.  To them and everyone else I sincerely thank you for your patience during the growing pains of CoachAccountable.  I take reliability of the platform very seriously, and am happy to have taken the suitable (and indeed necessary!) measures for greater reliability and speed as things continue to unfold.

It’s hard for me to know for sure as my shaky internet connection here in Nepal has every page taking some 10 seconds or more to load, but I’m told that things are running much faster than there were before.

Right then, back to developing more useful new features!