green GOLD

Green to Gold is the definitive book on the greening of business - the leading guide to driving growth and profits through GREEN STRATEGY!.

How smart companies use environmental strategy to innovate, create value, and build competitive advantage

No executive can afford to ignore the Green Wave sweeping the business world. This book shows how to make sustainability a core element of strategy - and profit from it... Chad Holliday, Chairman, DuPont.

Read to learn:

peer coaching (1)

PEER COACHING - the WHAT

There are many ways to define it ...from the root words 'peer' and 'coaching' anywhere! However, it depends on the client you (as a Coach) work with.

For the purpose of this discussion (in 5 series) I am taking EDUCATORS' environment to start with.

Peer Coaching

is a confidential process
through which
two or more professional colleagues
work together TO REFLECT
on CURRENT PRACTICES;
expand, refine, and build new skills;

SHARE IDEAS, TEACH ONE ANOTHER;
conduct classroom research or
SOLVE PROBLEMS in the WORKPLACE."

- Pam Robins, ASCD Virginia "How to Plan and Implement a Peer Coaching Program"

Note:
1. Peer coaching practices sometime referred as (used in school): peer support /consulting colleagues /peer sharing /caring.

2. The other names seem to have evolved, in some cases, out of teacher discomfort with the term 'coaching'. Some claim the word 'coaching' implies that the one person in the collaborative relationship has different status?

As research and experience inform us, "...the reality is that they are at the SAME RANK (Sizer 1995)... Teachers have the same classroom space, number of students and requirements. They all focus on the collaborative development, refinement and sharing of craft knowledge.

complexity

Complexity has its value?

If you want to be taken very, very seriously then you write a very, very complex book! Several things then happens:

1. If you really have nothing to say, it is better to make it as complex as possible otherwise people will see that! NOTHING IS BEING SAID!

2. Critics will love the book because they will feel specifically privileged that ONLY THEY CAN UNDERSTAND!

3. Critics will find that there is A LOT TO WRITE about the book - which is never the case with a simple book!

4. Academics will love the book because obviously the book needs the special skill of the academics for its INTERPRETATION TO ORDINARY PEOPLE!

5. NO ONE WILL DARE CRITICIZE the book because they are never quite sure that they understood it!

6. Any philosopher is free to read into the book anything he or she wants because the complexity ENCOURAGES ANY INTERPRETATION!

7. People will buy the book to SHOW THEIR CULTURAL SUPERIORITY but will not actually read it!

8. A cult will develop around the mystique of the book!

9. It will be naturally be assumed that the author is very profound thinker struggling to immensely complex thoughts!

10. Any number of SELF-APPOINTED INTELLECTUALS will have a very good time enjoying the complexity!

- by Edward de Bono, SIMPLICITY. Penguin Books

team...

Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is TEAMWORK that remains the ultimate competitive advantage - because it is so powerful and so rare.

The power of teamwork when...

"if you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction,
you could dominate any industry, in any market,
against any competition, any time" [Lencioni, 2002]

Team can be expressed in a single word, SYNERGY. Synergy means that the sum of the whole is greater than its individual parts.

TEAM* can simply expressed as follows:

T = Trusting Relationship,
E = Established Purpose, Values and Goals,
A = Active Participation by All the Members of the Group, and
M = Mutual Accountability.

* Stephen G Fairley & Bill Zipp, 2008. The Business Coaching Toolkit

life journey

Whether one specializes in life coaching or executive coaching, the coach often works with clients to help them design their own road-maps to get their intended destinations.

Having a road-map which signpost milestones, and mark possible paths through the terrain, is not the same as experiencing the journey. That journey is one clients will have to live through themselves!

The coach will find one powerful way to prepare clients for the integrity of their life journey - by raising awareness that the key to experiencing a meaningful life journey - is to take the one that is in alignment with their own values!

Next is a process of re-examining and simplifying their lives by getting rid of undesired baggage from the past. In that way the possibilities for increasing satisfaction in life - significance and magnitude that not experienced before.

The rebuilding ourselves from inside out require a searing light of clarity about the uniqueness in purpose, passion, gifts and values. And very much depending on "HOW FAR YOU WOULD WANT TO MOVE" along the continuum of change...

Source: Jennifer Y F Low & Arthayukti - Coach Passport.

strategy EXECUTION

In their latest book, The Execution Premium, Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2008), Drs. David P. Norton and Robert S. Kaplan provide a comprehensive management model designed to address one of management’s greatest challenges:
linking strategy formulation and planning with operational execution.

The six-stage model incorporates elements from the Balanced Scorecard, strategy maps, principles and practices along with management tools developed by leading experts to create a practical approach that will enable organizations to not only plan and successfully execute their strategy, but also to monitor, test and adapt their strategic assumptions in order to ultimately achieve an execution premium.

It consists of six major stages:

1. Develop the Strategy – Organizations must be able to state exactly what business they’re in, identify the key issues they face, and determine how best to compete. Developing the strategy uses an array of strategy tools such as mission, values, and vision statements; external competitive, economic, and environmental analyzes.

2. Plan the Strategy – Organizations must be willing to develop strategic objectives, measures, targets, initiatives, and budgets that will ultimately guide action and resource allocation. Planning the strategy uses such tools as strategy maps and Balanced Scorecards, along with targets and strategic initiatives.

3. Align the Organization – Organizations must be able to link company strategy to the strategies of individual business units while both aligning and motivating employees to optimize strategy execution. Align the organization with the strategy by cascading strategy maps and Balanced Scorecards to all organizational units.

4. Plan Operations – Organizations must link long-term strategy with day-to-day operations, aligning strategy with operating plans and budgets while focusing on those process improvements that are most critical to the strategy.

5. Monitor and Learn – Organizations must be committed to monitoring performance results once a strategy has been developed, planned and implemented, enabling us to determine if the strategy is being properly executed. This process integrates information about operations and strategy into a carefully designed structure of management review meetings.

6. Test and Adapt – Organizations must also test fundamental strategic assumptions to determine if we indeed, do have the right strategy. This involves testing and adapting the strategy, using internal operational data and new external environmental and competitive data.

Source: The Palladium Group /Balanced Scorecard Collaborative

pearls of wisdom

Let's ponder to the following inspiring comments, views and statements... and take those pearls of wisdom with you:

"When I look at a person I don't look at his age. I look at his energy level"
- Masamoto Yashoro, Chairman & CEO of Shinsei Bank

"Most people degenerate with age. We should regenerate instead."
- Albert Yee, Chairman of Yee Associates (famaous structural Engineer in the US)

"Leadership is about defining reality and giving hope"
- Kenneth Chenault, Chairman & CEO American Express Co (quoting Napoleon)

Compiled by:
Liew Mun Leong, Building People - Sunday Emails from CEO

natural habits...

The principles and paradigms of the Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) can be summarized as follows:

The first three can be expressed as MAKE and KEEP promises. The next three complementary-team habits suggest to INVOLVE PEOPLE in the problem and work out the solution TOGETHER.

The 7th habit is about constantly renewing ourselves in the four basic areas of life - physical, social /emotional, mental and spiritual ....that increases our capacity to live all other habits of effectiveness. That in a way reflecting our natural habits.

And the 8th habit is to FIND YOUR VOICE and INSPIRE OTHERS TO FIND THEIRS... it is the voice of human spirit. This voice also represents the soul of organizations that will survive, thrive and profoundly impact the future of the mankind.

Source:
Stephen R. Covey, The 8th Habit - From Effectiveness to Greatness. fCovey Co. (2005)

team...

Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is TEAMWORK that remains the ultimate competitive advantage - because it is so powerful and so rare.

The power of teamwork when...
"if you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, any time" [Lencioni, 2002]

Team can be expressed in a single word, SYNERGY. Synergy means that the sum of the whole is greater than its individual parts.

TEAM* can simply expressed as follows:

T = Trusting Relationship,
E = Established Purpose, Values and Goals,
A = Active Participation by All the Members of the Group, and
M = Mutual Accountability.

* Stephen G Fairley & Bill Zipp, 2008. The Business Coaching Toolkit

blue ocean...

"Don't compete with RIVALS,
Make them IRRELEVANT!..."
Winning by not competing. How?

A systematic approach that can be used to render rivals obsolete and unleash new demand by:

RECONSTRUCT market boundaries,

FOCUS on the big picture,

REACH beyond existing demand,

GET the strategic sequence right,

OVERCOME organizational hurdles,

BUILD execution into strategy.

simplicity

Why is it important to be simple? And what is simple enough?

The quest is what works! The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

While problems may be complex, the solution-focused approach to solving them is simple.

The SIMPLE model encompasses all the ideas that account for the unique effectiveness.

Solutions not problems;
Inbetween - the action is in the interaction;
Make use of what's there;
Possibilities - past, present and future;
Language - simply said;
Every case is different.

Source: The Solution-focused: Paul Z Jackson & Mark McKergow.

sF approach

The Solution-focused (sF) approach primarily focuses on creating solutions and working through to implement them. Focusing on WHAT WORKS is critical path towards this achievement.

To any sF coach, the phrase "if it works, DO MORE of it" addresses both his attention and the one of his client - to identify, acknowledge and develop more of what works.

"If it doesn't work, do something else!" - in making sure no one continues doing things that don't work. Both coach and his client to find WHAT ELSE TO DO, so that "it will work". Building on successes!

Would like to know more about Solution-focused Management? Click HERE

coaching-mentoring consulting

In the last ten years, there has been enormous growth in the fields of coaching, mentoring and consultancy. These professions, like psychotherapy and counseling before them, are going through a phase of professionalization, with the establishment of formal standards and certification bodies.


In responding to these growing demands, we will examine the followings:

a. Differences and similarities between coaching, mentoring and organizational consultancy;

b. Personal and professional development that leads to suitable change;

c. Qualities, capabilities, skills and values necessary for effective coaching, mentoring and supervison; and

d. Guidelines for practice.

Please check my future entries regarding the above.

Source: Peter Hawkins & Nick Smith 'Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy - Supervision and Development.