The Sense Makers

Here is a question that triggered a look into a personal value on how People are viewed.

I’m looking for case study stories of sales, marketing & product management teams leveraging AI to create an environment of stronger team collaboration, and ultimately tighter alignment to the customer and growth paths.

The question sounds very natural until you look at the word “leveraging”.  Here is a reply:

This is not a case examples but an unsolicited response to the language ”leveraging AI.”  As an engineer I understand levers and think they are brilliant. As a priest and psychologist I know the term leverage and find it unhelpful and often offensive when used in human systems as it implies “using force against somebody.” Leverage doesn’t not lead to collaboration.

Wouldn’t it be simpler and more humane to say “management teams using Appreciative Inquiry to create an environment of stronger team collaboration.”

Here is a similar use of language that causes me concern in today’s business world. In an attempt to humanize the work place, many business leaders talk of their employees as their greatest asset. That may sound very affirming until you think of what businesses do with their assets, they mortgage, leverage, broker sell, stretch, and strip mine their assets. Employees need to be way more than an asset in today’s world if they are to be valued and resourced to be their best.

What do you think? How would you have replied?

Executive coaching is all about improving performance – your personal performance, that of your teams and your combined contribution to the organizational brand.

We look at brand as the broad ‘holder’ for quality of product or service, customer interactions, response to market demands represented by agility and flexibility, internal processes and solid teamwork between all levels in the organization.

Exceptional results are likely to follow once the variables are well established and ‘owned’ by the individuals making up the teams and leaders.

So, where does executive coaching pay?

Lets start with you, the leader.  If you are able to talk through thorny issues with a person having significant business background and know that your discussion is kept in complete confidence, you have an opportunity to weigh potential options rationally.  As a coach, I will challenge your assumptions and ask those deceptively simple questions that make you stretch your thinking.  In effect, we are walking backwards up the results chain by identifying the results gap, analyzing the actions, understanding your behavior and, finally, working out how to change your context of operation.  If you look at this as a scenario, we test the impact of a different context on different thinking which drives behavior and actions.  Then we test the possible result to see how close we come to closing the gap.

The payoff is in the clarity of seeing possibilities through a different lens.  The lens is mirror the coach holds up to you, the space you gain to think differently, the assumptions you hold and are challenged by the coach and, finally, the scenarios you are to built and test for fit in theory.

Now, we put an action plan, timeline and checkpoints in place and get to trying the chosen scenario out in practice.  The key to learning and improving is reviewing the scenario results and analyzing how and why both the strong and weak points have happened, doing more of the good and tweaking the weak results by changing the approach, publishing the learning and instilling the lessons into ‘the way we do business round here’.

Internalizing learning is the fundamental building block of iterative change: celebrating these learning wins at all levels of the organization sets an example and involves all the organization members in the business.  We want to use the full range of brainpower available to the business to its maximum.

And so, performance improves, people are engaged and participate, celebrate wins, learn from losses and raise the bar on quality.  In turn, brand grows along both breadth and depth.  Your customers increase trust in the organization and form a solid base for earnings – what the Wall Street analysts call “quality of earnings”.