Make Accountability And Process Part Of Your Daily Routine

Good things can happen when you get a chance to see things differently. As discussed in We Hired A Business Coach, And Here’s What Happened, bringing in an outsider can help you do that.

There were two things the principals of that company were looking for: Accountability and a Process.

From the sound of it, they believe they got that. But when I read the article, I noticed that the environment where all this took place was a cozy, non-work location! Oh, no! The Offsite — that relic of the 80s and 90s, where talented, hardworking managers morphed into golf-shirted, relaxed-fit-Dockers-wearing zombies for 2.5 days, and — fueled by Dove Bars and Skittles — made well-intentioned but grandiose and impossible promises to a wall, papered by someone they’d just met on Day 1, before returning to the office to face the regular grind, now with a fresh bunch of mysterious to-do’s on their list.

Despite that rant, I’m not really against coaches or The Offsite. (Heck, I AM a coach. And I facilitate offsites, too!) And Accountability and Process are two important practices. I just think it’s important to be realistic about what you’re going for and what happens when you return home after it’s over. That’s going to require some advance planning before you begin the Offsite.

Accountability. It’s really easy to b.s. the person in the mirror about all the new habits you’re going to build. You’re more likely to get serious when you make a commitment to someone else. So there is a very good reason to go public with your promises. And maybe it’s natural in the early going to see your new coach as the person to whom you’re accountable. But you should be prepared before you start to wean yourself quickly from that. 

If you’re using the coach as a temporary surrogate to help jump-start your thinking and someone to whom you practice pledging to do good things for your business, that’s fine. But it’s absolutely critical that you transition that accountability as quickly as possible away from this outsider to the people who matter most to the success of your business: your co-workers, suppliers and others with whom you have important alliances and, most significantly, your customers. And, those commitments you made at the Offsite might have seemed right at the time, but might need adjustment (or abandonment) once they see the light of day, tested with real live stakeholders and customers.

Process. If there’s one thing all coaches seem to have in common, it’s Process. They’ve all got one and they’re eager to…well, work through it with you. That can be valuable because it pulls random thoughts, some of them quite valuable, from the heads of multiple stakeholders, commits them to flip-charts or post-it notes so everyone can see and work them over, and sets you up to reduce all that to action steps with accountabilities and due dates.

But the coach is taking you through HIS process. There’s something euphoric about getting swept up in someone else’s process. Everything seems possible. But ultimately it’ll be all about the action items and someone actually has to do them when you get home. And that’s when it has to be YOUR process. Yep, somehow those action steps have to be worked into that day-to-day, hum-drum stuff you thought you got away from when you went to The Offsite.*

So before you start, look at what your company’s regular workday is really like and think about how you’re going to fit these new things into everyone’s schedule. If you don’t, all your good ideas and action plans from the offsite will get drowned out in the regular work waiting back home.

*Here are some tips for getting maximum benefit from your offsite meeting.