Individual Coaching

Objectives-based coaching for short-term performance has its place, but can sometimes be as counter-productive as short-term performance management. Sustainable performance requires a sustainable coaching approach, to deliver performance that lasts well beyond the limited number of sessions defined in the coaching contract. Sustainable coaching takes the short-term objectives, and puts them into perspective by focusing on meaning and identity through a key question: “How do the coaching objectives fit with your identity and sense of meaning, and the vision and mission of the organisation as a whole?”

As part of the coaching process, I also use other tools such as NLP, intercultural coaching and personality type analysis, to meet the multifacted needs and contexts of the coachee.

Team coaching/Team building

Sustainable team coaching focuses on enabling teams to come to a common understanding of the underlying purpose of their organisation (“why are we here?”) to agree where they want to be in the long, medium and short-term, to develop common values that underpin their ambition, and to put in place concrete action plans to enable them to achieve it.

A number of half-day sessions, defined in the contract, enable the team to come to a common understanding of the team’s long and short-term goals, and of each individual’s contribution to achieving these goals. Sometimes a certain amount of regulation is needed between team members before the work on goals. Help may also be needed in implementation and strategy deployment, where I use my experience in strategy deployment in BT’s Global Networks.

Facilitation enables each member of the team to have her or his say, and to help the team to develop the capacity to listen to each other. This is because successful and sustainable goal-setting and execution uses the collective intelligence of the team, including that of the more reserved members.

Decision coaching

The STCA (See-Think-Choose-Act) model is a powerful model to help executive teams exploit the collective decision intelligence they already possess.

Process

  • Alignment of the team on the 5 key decisions in the next 18 months.

  • Alignment on where the team think they are on these decisions (See, Think, Choose or Act).

  • Review of decisions in the surrounding decision network: their impact on your key decisions, and the impact of your key decision on them.

  • Record status and put in place tracking and review mechanism.

Outcomes

  • Executive team is aligned on key decisions, issues and actions.

  • A focused, aligned and therefore high-performance organisation.

Consulting

Today, more and more medium-sized companies, who are realising the growing importance of the sustainability agenda, both for their brand and for the planet, need guidance and a model to help to become sustainable businesses – in all senses of the term. The strategic sustainability model I provide enables their executive teams to work through the key sustainability issues, and place them at the heart of their strategy.

Training and Public Speaking

My speaking engagements include IE (Innovation Enterprise) and Thought Leader international conferences on strategy, as well as specific modules on Sustainability for Management Centre Europe, as part of my role as Senior Associate.

I have also taught at University College London on decision making, and Paris university on quality, decision making and IT processes ITIL). I offer the following courses, which can be tailored for the needs of individual organisations.

Sustainability and strategy

As a Senior Associate of Management Centre Europe I teach on Sustainability, in particular on sustainability at the heart of strategy, using a model I have developed.[/li_item]

I also provide independently a full 3-day course on sustainability and strategy with the following curriculum.

Decision making in an uncertain environment

My doctorate at University College London on decision making in a complex and uncertain environment provided me with in-depth insights about how and why individuals and organisations make decisions.

From 2010 to 2012 I taught a module on decision making under uncertainty at University College London.

I provide a 2 or 5-day courses on decision making in a complex and uncertain environment, with the following curricula.

Strategic Management

Based on my experience when I owned the strategy for BT’s Global Networks (3,000 people), then for BT’s operations (12,000 people), and also on my doctorate research on decision making under uncertainty, I provide 2 and 5-day courses on strategy essentials, with a particular focus on strategy under uncertainty. This can be tailored for middle or senior management with specific requirements.

Thought Leadership and Writing

Sustainable development concerns individuals, teams and organisation. It involves an organisation’s strategy process, as I describe in the model on my “services” page. It also involves how an organisation operates. Brian Carney, Isaac Getz and Frédéric Laloux are some of the thinkers that inspire me in my thinking about how to make performance sustainable through an organisation’s culture, structure and operations. As an extension of my training and public speaking activities, I write on sustainability at the heart of strategy as well as on decision making under uncertainty.

  • I am the author of the chapter on Sustainable Service–Strategic Perspectives, in “Engineer and Optimize Services for the Green Era” (IGI Global, 2015).

  • I have also published several papers on decision making in the context of conferences at University College London and the London School of Economics. These are available on www.academia.edu.