The CoachAccountable Blog

A thought popped into my head earlier today.

It wasn’t my marketing brain that was engaged at the time, though you’d swear it was.  The thought was, quite simply, “Wow, how did I ever do coaching before CoachAccountable?”

Let me explain just a little, lest this sound like a vapid and shameless pandering of my baby.

I had just gotten done with a coaching call with Tim.  Here’s what the role of CoachAccountable looked like for that hour:

1. I prepped myself for five minutes prior to the call by reading the session notes from the last week, glancing at the action items we’d created (observing items that were done, not done, and done late), and glancing at his metrics (observing some numbers that were flat and a growing gap on the graph between target and actual).
2. On our call we jumped right in to what was going on, able to skip over much of the need for (and time drain of) a progress report.
3. As we crafted a game plan I said several times words to the effect of “Great, put that in as an action.”
4. When our call was over I hit the refresh button to see what exactly Tim had entered for himself to accomplish for the week, plus the self-declared due dates for each.
5. With automatic reminders set for each action I could rest well knowing he had a leg up on whole “remembering to follow through” situation.
6. I took 5 minutes to type up the main nuggets from our session into my typical template for session notes (overview, key insights, next actions).

And when I hit save on those session notes, thereby wrapping up our coaching for the week in a tidy little package that would be easy to build upon the next, I had that thought.

“How did I ever do coaching before CoachAccountable?”

It was a juicy and delicious thought when I recognized it.  Of course coaching was never an impossible task without the aid of software, it’s just that CoachAccountable has evolved to the level where it feels like a luxury that would be a shame to go without.

For at least one human being’s style of coaching, the software works.  A very good sign when developing something new.

As I’ve alluded to in recent updates, the development of CoachAccountable 2.0 is being done with the benefit of live coaching relationships taking full advantage of the system.  This allows for practical use that really guides the process and ensures it remains on the right track.  These relationships are with a few friends who have graciously volunteered to be the guinea pigs for CoachAccountable 2.0.

I’d like to now introduce one of them, Tim.

Tim is the owner of BTDenver, a one-man shop that provides computer maintenance, setup, and support services for small businesses.  To put it in readily familiar terms: he’s essentially in the same business as the Best Buy Geek Squad.  But he’ll tell you there’s a real and important difference between a deeply savvy specialist (like he is) and commodity-grade technician proffered up by large service shops like the Geek Squad (in his words, “there are a lot of talented members working there, but the average one working on your problem is basically a high schooler following a flowchart”).

Tim is good at what he does.  He’s managed to sustain himself as a solo entrepreneur for over three years, has a boatload of client testimonials swearing he’s the bees knees, and has the expertise and conversational chops around all things technical to back it up.

Tim and I have been friends for about two years, and as fellow solo entrepreneurs we have a lot in common to talk about.  It was February that he told me he was wanting to up his business game.  Indeed, no matter how good you are at the service you actually sell people, in our position there’s also the “running a business” side of things which calls for a completely different set of skills.  I would begin coaching him informally a month later, and more regularly once the alpha version of CA2.0 was ready (the end of April).

As a way to have Tim introduce himself and share a little about our coaching relationship and using CoachAccountable, I gave him a few questions to answer.  Here’s what he said:

 In March business was good enough to pay my bills but wasn’t growing and fluctuated from dead to too much work on a week to week basis.  I was often frustrated by the situations that arose and either took my unpaid time or caused conflict.

My goal was to transform from a mediocre business that had good and bad days of both income and satisfaction into a rock star level that did more than just pay my bills and was emotionally rewarding much more often than not.

Three factors drew me to CoachAccountable: 1) John, as a coach, had accomplished what I wanted to in a very similar industry recently enough to have relevant insights, 2) CoachAccountable brought a smooth and engaging online interface that realized many of the tools I had wished for in my own attempts at improvement, and 3) being a guinea pig hit the perfect price point for where I was at.

The coaching structure is roughly the following cycle: talk about was is and isn’t working right now, create a plan with actions and metrics as appropriate, receive intermediate feedback if something isn’t working, evaluate and start over.  Some of the “create a plan” step is really just immediate feedback and ideas, the rest is more structured battle plans.

I can see movement toward the models that I want to be using.  My overall satisfaction is higher and I have productive ways of transforming frustrating experiences.  Revenue is already increased too.  I’m not where I want to be, and not even as far as I was hoping to be, but the progress is clear and invigorating.

CA is a great way of connecting the battle plan with daily life.  The online medium is accessible, and the intelligence of the application guides the minutia in a way that a coach couldn’t have time for.  There are limitations to what can be done that probably affect the approaches to problems, but nothing that I’ve been able to notice or regretted.

Without CA it would be much easier to procrastinate on tracking important actions and metrics and more time during coaching sessions would be spent talking about what did and did not happen from last week’s plan.

Even with CA, it’s easy to get caught up in a fire and stop paying attention to the coaching plan for a few days.  It still falls to your own accountability to keep checking in every day and stay focused on the goals.

While looking through the visitor stats the other day I noticed that coachaccountable.com has gotten 3 hits for the search phrase “what’s up with coachaccountable?”. For me that’s a fascinating  glimpse into the zeitgeist of the internet: there’s a small sliver of folks who saw our website, presumably thought what we were up to was worthwhile and on the right track, and accordingly wondered why things should be all shut down.

Something that I think is worth sharing to address that curiosity is the story of what happened when we used the polished version of CoachAccountable 1.0 for ourselves.

It was shortly after our initial release, in the summer of ’09.  Lee and I both signed up to be coaches in a months-long transformational program with Landmark Education.  We both had 4 coachees each, and wanted to give CA a test run as a tool for keeping up with the actions, game plans and progress of our people.  Though Lee’s was similar, I’ll describe my own experience.

Bottom line: after 3 weeks of using CoachAccountable with real people that I was coaching on a regular basis, I realized that I just didn’t like it.

This is a heartbreaking realization about something you’d just spent the last 18 months working on, but there was no denying it.  The displays made it hard to see what was going on over time.  The actions presented more work than they were worth.  The template system in all its elaborate glory made it clunky and inflexible to take session notes.  It was work to convince my coachees to use the system regularly, and without that the point was largely moot.

CoachAccountable 1.0 looks GREAT in its screenshots, and works poorly in practice.

Though we collectively had coaching experience in the past, not being involved in coaching actively while developing the software proved fatal, and our assumptions that our past coaching experience would guide us were naively optimistic.

With such a realization coming after we were at the end of our willingness to bootstrap and live lean, indefinite suspension of the project was a natural choice.

The Lesson Within

The lesson of all of this is well rooted in my mind as I pick up the torch once more to create CoachAccountable 2.0.  The last 3 weeks I’ve been coaching my people with our interactions based in the new software.  Some things immediately reveal themselves as great: they just work every bit as well as I’d hoped when I sketched the designs.  Other things are screamingly terrible, lacking, or cumbersome in ways I did  not imagine.  And with flaws laid so bare it is a simple matter and true joy to smooth them over, guided by insight from real experience.

The coaching and refinement of CA 2.0 continues, I’m excited for how good I know the end result will be.

Just one day before I move out to commence World Tour with my wife, I have the major overhaul of CoachAccountable at a place complete enough to test out in the field with my coachees.  It’s an exciting day, and I’m delighted to have this large chunk of work done before we embark on the more vagabond lifestyle.

“Alpha” means that it is in a stage that is still too rough and untested for more broad consumption, it will still be a little while before I’m ready to open the new version up to a broader audience.  I will do so after some time of using and refining with my coachees.

I really like it in it’s current state.  I’ll know it’s ready for prime time and suitable to show off once I love it.

And I have an update on what is happening with CoachAccountable.

But first it seems fitting to take a little time to introduce myself and share with you a little about who I am, in particular concerning my role and relationship to this fine and waylaid  endeavor.   A lot has changed in the two and a half years since anyone last posted here on the CoachAccountable blog, and I believe the most personal tidbit about me that one can find in our archives thus far is a passing mention of my fondness for Dance Dance Revolution (still true, by the way).

I’ll begin with some back story: when our team was last on the trail in any publicly visible way back in the fall of ’09, it was myself, Lee Robinson, and Rob Fieldhouse giving it our all, bootstrapped but proud.  A few months of trying to approach the market unsuccessfully revealed that we three didn’t have what it would apparently take to make it work, and we put things all on an indefinite pause.  We were over being poor chasing the dream.

In the fall of 2010, we swapped interests in our jointly held ventures: I exchanged my ownership of PlaygroundCreative to Lee and Rob for their ownership of CoachAccountable.  It was a most fitting arrangement: they were full-on doing the agency thing, and we all agreed it would take some serious rebuilding of CoachAccountable to make it fit for the market–a quest fit only for me (as programmer) should I ever choose to take it on.

Today the three of us are doing quite well.  Rob got poached by one of the Playground clients, and thus became a Creative Director for an international brand, Brown Shoe (a position generally reserved for the pinnacle of a designer’s career, Rob took the position while still under the age of 30).  Lee, after a good period of running Playground, led the charge for an agency in St. Louis to procure a massive contract for another international brand, and upon winning it was hired on to lead the team to much fanfare (she was told that the quality and breadth of her portfolio is largely unheard of at her stage in the game).

As for me, I’ve been doing my thing solo programmer-for-hire as JPL Consulting, enjoying a run as CTO of DealNation as well as working on many interesting projects.  Like Lee and Rob, I am prospering, and the bootstrapped days of being poor seems long gone.

Which makes an interesting situation for CoachAccountable: I no longer need it to work, and I’ve got bandwidth and financial breathing room to give it another go.  I’m 4 years wiser since first laying down the foundations of the software, and there’s an undeniably greater allure to pursue it as the sole owner vs. one-third owner: I’m free to call the shots and be responsible for the outcome to no one but myself.

All of this is to say that CoachAccountable will be relaunching, and as the solo driver of that I’d like to let you know a little more about who the heck I am.

Back when we were blogging before, we were all very careful to put forth the proper public persona for the company, which is basically a fancy way of saying we too insecure to authentically communicate with our natural, personal styles, preoccupied instead with “getting it right” and “looking professional”.

Since then I’ve come to love blogging and openly sharing exactly who I am and what I’m about.  I’ve written a lot detailing both my personal exploits with an emphasis on travel and transformational philosophy, as well as my professional views exploring the art of being a great programmer for hire.  My professional blog has been featured a few times on Hacker News and Slashdot, which has granted me the profound privilege of contributing thoughts and ideas to a large audience of my programmer peers.

Most of how I live, what I value, and how I roll can be gained by reading my personal and professional blogs alluded to above, but if you want the broad strokes, here they are.

I’m 32 and married to the love of my life, Tracy.  She has 2 businesses, private yoga instruction and professional wedding and portrait photography.  Together we create adventures that take advantage of the freedom that comes from us both being self employed.  To wit, as I write this we are 7 days away from moving out of our apartment and starting on World Tour, a 16-month long trip of us traveling and living at various places around the world.  Yep we like to travel.

I love programming, and have been pridefully deepening my craft in web development for the last 9 years.  After one time having over 80,000 hits on one of my blog posts in a three day period I’m fascinated by the possibility of becoming a famous nerd, or in other words a thought leader in my trade, following in the footsteps of my heroes who have made great contributions to the field.  People are starting to reach out to me for advice on their situations, so I seem to be on the right track.  I reckon I might be writing a book, one post at a time.

Finally I am completely fascinated and enamored by the power of coaching and what I would call other applications of the transformational arts to better individuals and humanity overall.  I don’t do it in a professional capacity but I do do it informally with friends.  You better believe I’ve got a few that I’ll be working with as I develop the remix of CoachAccountable, to be certain it’s the best possible software for empowering real coaching relationships.  I can’t wait, and they’re excited too.  You’ll meet them later.

So that’s me; that’s who I am as I work to mold CoachAccountable into a great product ready for prime time.  I’ll have more to say on what’s next soon, and I’m excited to make great contributions to both coaches and coaching.  If you want to know more or want to ask me any questions, by all means reach out with an email, john at coachaccountable dot com.

Cheers,
John

Last week I distinguished the notion “existence systems” and their importance to people who are Up To Something.  Then I speculated on what are the underlying, defining characteristics that make them great.  Now I want to explore their role in coaching relationships, and I’ll do so looking from where we [at CoachAccountable] aim to contribute to the coaching profession.

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?

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.

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.