The following frameworks are central to our innovation coaching approach.
- Approach to innovation
- Approach to leadership
- Approach to the process of change
Innovation
With regard to innovation, I have selected and tested several instruments that help organisations reflect on, assess and improve their innovative culture, processes and impact. These instruments can be used to work with a leader or a team. All of the instruments can be used to assess past or current performance and to shape and improve future performance. Knowledge, technology and innovation all interact within a culture. Leadership must intentionally think through their internal organisation, priorities, and messages while considering the external sociopath technical and competitive environments.
The instruments I have chosen can all be used to reflect on strategy, change, evolution, knowledge management, technology and innovation management.
The Instigating Innovation framework I have developed is briefly outlined on this below.
Leadership
I am certified to use the Analytic-Network Coaching approach developed by Prof. Simon Western. It is a coaching system that helps clients to develop their personal, authentic leadership approach and strategically influence the networks in which they work, to create positive transformational change. It is a process approach where the coach supports the client to work systematically through five “frames” to help them discuss deep personal insights, identify and strive for desired change, develop connectedness and understand how to deliver individual and organisational transformation.
The five frames are:
1. Depth Analysis: Coaching the inner self
Coaching for personal insight, authenticity, joy, meaning, spirituality, clarifying values, purpose and desire.
2. Relational Analysis: Coaching the relational self
Exploring how we relate to others and how others relate to us, finding patterns, addressing challenges and managing emotions attached to relationships to improve teamwork, leadership and living well.
3. Leadership Analysis: Coaching the leader-within
Coaching the client to fulfil their unique leadership potential. Developing new understandings of 21st-century leadership and how to distribute leadership throughout organizations.
4. Network Analysis: Coaching the networked self
Locating the client in their networks to ground them and develop a ‘networked mindset’. Coaching to influence nodal change points, harnessing the power of the network to grasp emergent opportunities.
5. Strategic Analysis: Coaching the strategic mindset
After reviewing the other four frames, we coach clients to develop strategic agility and deliver strategic personal, team and organizational plans. Developing strategic thinking to work with emergence and innovation is a core task of today’s leaders.
Each frame in the A-N Coaching System™ is vitally important in its own right. However, the five frames together create a potent, holistic coaching system that has a profound impact on clients. Having used the coaching system to address current challenges, clients internalize the framework, which they draw on as a map to guide future decision-making and actions. This Coaching System is designed to achieve short-term goals whilst delivering long-term benefits by changing how leaders think and work.
Process approach
We see coaching, innovation and change as an iterative process. We draw on the consulting and process methods of Donald Schein, Edgar Schein and others. In Mesopartner, we have also developed many process consulting and facilitation instruments over the years. Central to our approach is dialogue and joint sense-making. It is not enough that plans and systems improve but that the quality of conversation and the narratives in the organisation must also change.
The process methodology that we use is described on the systemic-insight.com website.