What happens to an employee’s growth plan when her organization pivots?
The answer is that she must pivot, too. And quickly!
A sudden and dramatic shift in strategic direction for a company is all but impossible without complementary tactical adjustments in the focused development of the individuals who make it up.
Look at the titanic turns we’ve already been coping with. When an automaker suddenly stops manufacturing cars and starts making ventilators, the Quality Control Manager must rapidly retool her Personal Development Plan to continue contributing meaningfully in her abruptly modified job. Event Coordinators at hotels and conference centers can’t pack the halls right now or for the near future. They’ll need new strategic focus to continue supporting the survival of the company.
It is times like this that make me proud to have pioneered a system with quickness and urgency in its name. Catalytic means “speeding the pace of significant change.” Coaching we define as “getting a group of people to work together in a way that allows them to win.” Frankly, folks, isn’t Catalytic Coaching exactly what we need in a world of massive and, sometimes, instantaneous pivots?
Now, imagine a schoolteacher and how his coaching might be forced to adjust by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Here were the development priorities listed on the teacher’s Coaching Worksheet in late January:
Focus Areas BCV (Before Coronavirus)
Advanced Biology – Develop curriculum for Independent Study in Biology to give advanced students an opportunity to earn college credit.
Team Building – Improve cross-departmental relations with the Math Dept.
Presentation Skills – Enhance ability to speak from a podium.
Budgeting – Take leadership role in developing and managing departmental budget.
Normal stuff. Nothing urgent. Building on Strengths. Shoring up a couple of unsteady areas. Attempting to create at least one opportunity for exposure and visibility that would enhance the potential for advancement.
Of course, most of that went right out the window around mid-March, when the entire campus was closed and the Governor decreed that all learning institutions in the state will finish the school year utilizing “distance learning.” In a flash, our schoolteacher was faced with course delivery requirements for which he had no requisite training or experience, despite his thirty-year tenure. Meanwhile, his top original priority of designing a new course offering was preempted by a desperate rush to save the ones they already had.
Developmental Focus Areas that made perfect sense in January were made instantly irrelevant in March. A new game plan with reconfigured development goals became imperative. Perhaps, something like this:
Focus Areas ACV (After Coronavirus)
Zoom! – Learn to deliver classes, in a compelling fashion, over the internet.
PowerPoint – Convert course content from paper to digital slides.
Counseling – Share the load in helping students cope with life challenges.
Budgeting – Assist department in proactively adjusting to inevitable shifts in funding and expenses.
Before the organizational pivot, priorities one through three were not on the radar. There was no need. However, after the pivot, new priority #1 could become Job Threatening. An instructor who cannot teach via technology must be replaced by someone who can. It is not personal. The teacher did nothing wrong. The world just changed and now he must, too. Post haste!
An organization’s survival is dependent on its ability to pivot. The effectiveness of the pivot is ultimately determined by the capacity of individual team members to rapidly retool. Having a system that is both scalable and auditable is absolutely paramount.
If your organization must rapidly reverse course, don’t risk leaving your people behind.
It is not enough to merely request managers have purposeful conversations with their direct reports. Nor is it sufficient to take their word that these have happened. Leaders who want to ensure that their teams make quick work of mission critical shifts must verify that coaching conversations have taken place and must inspect for obvious gaps in quality and effectiveness.
So, what can you do to turn an organizational pivot into complementary individual actions that maximize its chance of success?
Out with the Old… If you completed coaching with your direct reports pre-crisis and have now absorbed a paradigm-altering pivot, start over. Don’t trust that casual conversations will suffice. Use a formal coaching process to create a detailed development plan in writing that clearly communicates a shared understanding of both priority and urgency.
Trust, but Verify. As mentioned above, it’s important to audit coaching results. If time is limited, concentrate first on areas of the company that appear to be struggling. Offer (assertively) to help managers who appear confused or lost. It may be that they simply need more in-depth training. When you encounter resistance, adjust the manager’s Focus Areas to underscore the necessity to improve coaching execution.
The Grand Cascade. Some of the most important Focus Areas during a company pivot start at the top and roll their way down thematically based on roles and responsibilities. Focus Area #1 in the ACV scenario above, may well apply to hundreds of staff members in a large teaching institution. Strategically derived Focus Areas can be made more personal with effective use of examples by the coach.
Are You OK? When an organization makes a rapid, large-scale, strategic shift, it will often have vastly different implications for different people. If you are going to do a hard reboot on your Catalytic Coaching, don’t skip the Coaching Input session, which normally comes first. Supplement the standard questions with an open-ended query about how each direct report is coping personally with the pivot.
Garold (Gary) Markle is the creator of Catalytic Coaching and author of Catalytic Coaching: The End of the Performance Review. He brings real world experience from 17 years in HR leadership in major corporations coupled with 20 years of teaching small and mid-sized organizations how to cultivate their leadership and ditch their detrimental performance reviews for a proven Coaching process.
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