Here are some conversations and messages I’m currently sharing in our agile and tech communities (https://coaching.benextcompany.com).

Assumptions about the quality of context

Whether they’re brand new to the role of product owner or scrummaster, or more experienced, I regularly hear people say: banks aren’t a sexy environment, I much prefer media. This is completely unfounded. It’s not the company’s business that will give you its flavor. Naturally you can decide based on your convictions not to work with an oil company, a shipowner, which I understand and accept very well, but that’s not the subject I’m discussing here. We imagine that large structures, often banks, or insurance companies, are less interesting than startups, or media, etc. The reality I know contradicts the idea that one could predefine this in advance. In a large entity, one department will be fascinating, another not. The same department could be exciting at one time, and no longer be so the following year. What may seem exciting from afar (working for a major French media outlet) can turn out to be a disappointment (no space, no capacity to have an impact, no creativity, etc.). I absolutely cannot tell you in advance what you’ll end up with. I’m not defending one or the other. I’m trying to make this understood.

The temporality of coaching has nothing to do with cause and effect

The biggest shock that newcomers to the world of organizational coaching experience is the change in temporality. Among us, budding coaches aren’t always prepared for this. There’s no longer really cause and effect, there’s a set of dynamics that all interact with each other in one way or another, through mirror effects, rebounds, echoes, etc. There are great voids, and suddenly ruptures, tears, or nothing, or breaks. But this isn’t dictated by any particular dynamic, but rather by vibrations that at some point (or never) make positions and postures waver. For some of our budding coaches, and more broadly for coaches, this is painful. It’s a difficult role, ultimately quite solitary and without enough tangible recognition. We don’t find what we do in developmental coaching where a framework or request is expressed (sometimes clearly) and better still, where the coaching is desired. You have to be ready for this.

They suddenly want to leave, because their actions don’t seem to have any effect. I don’t know, but the difficulty of the task often pushes them out too quickly. You have to know how to be patient. The whole difficulty is not being too patient. Deciding at the last responsible moment remains good advice. And you have to learn to live in this no man’s land (I’m not talking about people who abuse systems to vegetate in a corner).

Who is the client?

It’s very unclear in organizational coaching. There’s no framework like in developmental coaching, nor such a clear request, nor such an affirmed desire. And I don’t believe – to this day – that this can be the case, the real client being the organization in my eyes. Its request comes through the intermediary of a person who applies their filter. Or even several people, the requester, the payer (the real payer is the company). What does the organization ask for, what does the organization want seems to me to be the real question. But it’s a dangerous game, by giving this request to a being that doesn’t exist I open the door to the possibility of making many false interpretations. Of imposing our convictions and allowing ourselves not to listen to people. But people carry with them a layer of politics and habits that must also be filtered. We’re caught in difficulties from all sides. Nevertheless it seems to me that taking a step back and taking the position that the organization is the real client provides space and brings more relevant questions. And isn’t that the role of confrontation, to question in a relevant way?

What’s next?

And after agile? Who cares, right? Currently the difficulty is that agile is never the target and too often it becomes one. And perhaps more importantly: the pace of reflection and evolution of observations about companies, this pace seems more dynamic to me than that of companies’ appropriation of these new disciplines, know-how and ways of being. Hence the great feeling of going in circles in the so-called agile community. But perhaps we’re entering a period of mass collapse of companies that haven’t been able to reform themselves. I hope so. I’m not at all a collapsologist, this collapse would be good news (even if unfortunately it might lead to significant social damage).