I forget when I first thought about this idea, but it’s been several years. It’s about taking a service-oriented view to agile coaching.
One genesis point for me was talking to an agile transformation director leading a team of coaches. He lamented that his coaches were constantly pulled in multiple directions well beyond their capacity and skills.
I brainstormed with him about whether a service-oriented mindset or approach would be helpful to him. And we defined that as—
Define a set of coaching services that his team would provide;
Define Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) or delivery agreements for each service;
Market the services to the organizational stakeholders;
Manage capacity (across services, across coaches, and unique skills);
Perhaps on an annualized basis, reevaluate service outcomes, needs, and rebalance the investment in the team.
One problem he was experiencing was the extensive skillset assumed by his coaching team. That is—they can coach in any situational context. Which certainly wasn’t true. A service orientation would not only define what they would provide but what they would or could not provide.
I’m unsure if he went down this path further or whether it helped with his challenges. But I think the idea has merit, and I thought I’d share some ideas about creating a service-oriented agile coaching practice.
What is your Vision, Ikigai, Reason for Being?
Before you dive in and immediately begin defining your service offerings, I would recommend you do a few things first.
Determine your vision for your group or organization and establish your purpose or your ikigai (reason for being). As a leader, I like to do this with my team—brainstorming our options and narrowing them down into a compelling vision that (1) serves the needs of the business and (2) excites my team.
And before you disagree, I’ve found that it is possible to create a vision that does both. Another thing to think about at this stage is your brand. I love the Steve Jobs quote that say’s—
Your brand is what folks say about you when you’re not in the room.
So, what are you going to create and offer that has then saying, amplifying, and appreciating your services when you’re not around?
What’s in Scope? And not in Scope for your Agile Coaching?
One of the following steps is to establish the overall scope of your services. Your first consideration should be your organizational and situational context. What are your clients (stakeholders, sponsors, etc.) asking for? And conversely, what do you think they need? The confluence of these two perspectives should define your true north.
Another aspect of determining scope is whether you provide services as an inside employee or an outside consulting firm. While this should impact your scope on the surface, there are quite a few factors to consider, and I’ve covered many of them in this post.
But to be clear, I think any service offering scope statement should include what you’re offering and what you’re not offering.
Service Offerings in Support of Your Vision Advisory
One of the things I’d highly recommend is aligning your coaching services with the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel. It nicely serves as a baseline for defining what agile coaching is and the primary range of competencies (skills, practices, capabilities) associated with it.
The ACGW established five core competencies for your coaching—
Advising (consulting)
Coaching (professional, ICF)
Facilitating
Leading (modeling)
Mentoring & Teaching
And, yes, there is often a blending across them when you are coaching. But that being said, each has some unique skills associated with them that influence your service offerings.
As an aside, I think all but #4 can be mapped into services. Leading and self-management are more aligned with your coaching mindset.
Define SLAs for each of your service offerings
For each of your services, I like to begin by defining the problem to be solved. What is the challenge, situation, context, or problem that your coaching service will assist in resolving?
An excellent way to communicate this is by articulating possible outcomes from the coaching service. And I would recommend being multifaceted here. Not simply saying things like—you’ll go faster or communication will improve.
If you can, now would be a good time also to articulate the client’s investment not only in cost but in their time partnering with you to tackle the challenge.
Capacity assessment, for each of the service offerings—
There are two essential parts here. First, you’ll want to identify your capacity to deliver each service. Think in terms of people and skills here. How many coaches do I have that are sufficiently skilled to provide this service?
For example, if you’re providing a Team Dojo style service, be clear about how many and what type of teams you can handle in parallel. You might even want to identify “entry criteria” for the service.
But also think about your overall practice capacity across all of your services. You’ll probably have coaches that can support multiple services. The danger here is that this beautiful flexibility can often lead to over-commitment.
You’ll want to articulate this carefully so that the organization understands your capacity and that you’re not turning too much business away or people are getting the sense that you can’t help them.
Marketing
Of course, you should first construct a “services offered” sheet that succinctly lists your services, challenges, and outcomes.
One of the most effective ways to explain what you do is by sharing a few stories and compelling story telling. Think of it as providing a compelling narrative that explores your delivery of each service while mainly focusing on outcomes and results.
I particularly like “phoenix rising” stories where you explore a client moving from a challenged state to an improved state and what you (and they) did during that journey.
Growth Strategies
The last thing I wanted to discuss was not taking a continuous learning and growth view to your services.
I’ve found the Liberating Structure – Ecocycle Planning to be a helpful way to reevaluate my service offerings periodically. Not simply evaluate them, but determine the need to retire some and create new offerings.
This, in combination with a healthy and rich feedback mechanism, maintains the relevancy and value of your services.
Wrapping Up
The primary perspective of this article is that of a team of coaches offering services. But that being said, it’s also useful for individual coaches to take a “services view” of their capabilities.
Developing a services sheet for yourself would be most helpful if you're an individual coach, as you would be taking a longer-term view to increase your skills and extend your services. So, don’t think of yourself as simply an agile coach who coaches. Instead, think of yourself as a coaching firm (whether real or virtual) with specific capabilities and services to serve your clients.
And if you’re a firm, group, or team of agile coaches, then I would strongly encourage you to consider thinking in terms of capabilities & services. Either way, I hope I’ve done you a good service.
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.