In This Chapter

Getting on the right track to begin with

Acknowledging when a business is off-track

Making course adjustments to get back on track

Keeping a business on track involves more than checking financial accounts, having regular progress meetings and measuring to see whether targets or objectives set have actually been achieved. Yet as a coach, these are always the first places to begin when coaching a business to keep on track.

We are always shocked by how many businesses fail to have these fundamental measures in place. They’re the low-hanging fruit (the easy, early successes) for coaches to pick. Reviewing finances, assessing the way a business conducts meetings and evaluating how it measures its performance are always good places to review before doing any coaching. These areas often show if a business is on or off track and reveal the reasons why. Many businesses, especially small to medium enterprises, fail to have these measures in the first instance, so you must coach clients to have these in place if they don’t already have them.

In this chapter, we offer ten powerful questions that go beyond financials, meetings and measuring. They’re questions that can assist you to coach clients to see whether they’re on the right track to begin with and to check whether they’re still on track. The answers to the questions can also give clients insights into the adjustments they need to make to get back on track.

The questions can be asked of individuals, teams, in relation to projects and for organisations. In this chapter, when we refer to projects, you can read it to mean individuals, teams and organisations.

What Would We Create If Anything Was Possible?

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

–Lao Tzu

On any journey, you want to make sure you head off in the right direction from the outset. You’re a fool to head east looking for a sunset. Many businesses start off on the wrong track to begin with or head in a direction where if they knew the destination, they probably wouldn’t have started the journey at all.

‘What would we create if anything was possible?’ is a great question to ask at the start of any project, throughout the project and at any time during the life cycle of a business to ensure that it stays on a worthy track.

While working on a project with his friend, best-selling author and self-help guru, Paul McKenna, it was Steve’s responsibility to put together a business plan for an idea they had developed.

After months of working to check the Proof of Concept and to create a plan Fit for Purpose (see Chapter 9), they had a robust, well-researched plan that seemed worthy of investing their valuable time, money and effort into.

Late one evening, Steve received a telephone call from Paul, who was laughing hysterically. He had been discussing the plan with friends and advisors, all of whom are internationally recognised entrepreneurs. One advisor is a globally recognised branding and marketing expert. He owns, among other things, an airline and a football team. Paul was laughing because his friend couldn’t understand why they were thinking so small with the project.

After getting his bruised ego out of the way, Steve sat with this feedback for a while and realised that his friend was correct. Neither Paul nor Steve think small – they had even referenced the plan ‘Blue Sky Thinking’ – but Paul’s friend only thought on a global scale.

Steve revisited the plan and scaled it up from a national to an international project. The additional work involved in turning the plan into a global reality was small by comparison to that involved for a national project, and the potential return was also significantly of more value.

Ask this question of your clients to ensure that they’re on the right track to begin with. Far too often, businesses think small and have the ladder of success propped up against a low wall. A lot of time, money and effort goes into projects that, even when successful, people often say, ‘Is that it?’ Coach the client to think bold and get on the right track to begin with.

Why Are We Doing This?

And it comes from saying no to one thousand things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

–Steve Jobs

When we ask clients this question, we are asking them to enquire into what’s important to them. The ‘Why?’ question reveals their values.

If you think of values as unwritten, often unconscious rules that tell you what’s right and what’s wrong, then values can be used as a compass to let you know if you are on- or off-track with your actions.

Identifying the values for an individual, a team, project or organisation is a crucial enquiry and an exercise worthy of spending time on.

When you act in conflict with your own personal values, you get a sense of ill ease, it feels wrong and you are said to be incongruent. When you act in alignment with your values, it feels right and feels congruent. Right actions seem easy choices and obvious, and results often happen naturally and effortlessly.

Get clients to write their values down, keep them in plain view and encourage them to keep the ‘Why?’ in mind at all times. Doing so is a simple, elegant yet powerful way to use values as an inner compass to check that actions being taken are keeping the business on track.

What Would Richard Branson Do Now?

Don’t think what’s the cheapest way to do it or what’s the fastest way; think what’s the most amazing way to do it.

–Richard Branson

In Chapter 3, we explore the value of a different perspective. We all act through the perspectives of what we think are the right actions to take, and we see the world through the rose-tinted glasses of our own beliefs about what’s possible and what’s not.

By asking this question, you create the coaching space for a client to go beyond his own limited thinking. You can replace Richard Branson for any industry expert or person who would be a valuable advisor on a support team. Allow for out-of-the-box, blue sky and lateral thinking and explore all options and insights that the client has.

This question can often reveal quicker, better, easier or more amazing tracks to the one your client is currently following.

What Is a Better Way?

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.

–Friedrich Nietzsche

Projects and plans change over time, and what may have been a great plan at the start may no longer be the best plan. The phrase ‘building the aircraft as we fly’ is often used in a negative way, implying little or poor planning. Many businesses know the value of launching a project before it’s perfect, gathering feedback from customers or staff and adjusting as they go.

If a business is rigid and inflexible and the leadership has its mind set on following a predetermined plan, that business is closing off other options. Use this question as a regular check to adjust plans and action steps as the project unfolds and evolves and as new information is gathered.

This question is a variation on the preceding one. It presupposes that a better way is possible. Allow for brainstorming and replace the word ‘better’ with ‘quicker’, ‘easier’, ‘more elegant’, ‘more cost-effective’ or ‘smarter’.

Are We Still the Right People to Be Doing This?

Talent is the No. 1 priority for a CEO. You think it’s about vision and strategy, but you have to get the right people first.

–Andrea Jung

As the golden glow of enthusiasm for a new project fades to the dull, tarnished glimmer of apathy, wavering enthusiasm can be a sign that the project or business is off-track.

Many projects stall or fail because of lack of enthusiasm and people failing to deliver. In such cases, they not only go off-track, but it often seems as if the track they were on begins to fade away before their very eyes.

If a business is in this state, always ask clients the first two questions in this chapter to check whether the project is a worthy and inspiring one and whether the project is in alignment with their values. If the answers to these questions are both ‘yes’, then wavering enthusiasm is often a sign that the business may not have the right people for the tasks.

It requires honest courage to ask and answer this question. Egos have to be set aside for the greater good of the project or business. A healthy business has the honesty to respectfully replace people with those better suited to the tasks.

Are We Busy Being Busy?

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system planning, intelligence and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

–Thomas Edison

Most people never have enough time in the day to do all the tasks that have to be done. The business world is full of people busy being busy without being productive.

Client time is often spent doing urgent rather than important tasks that would keep a project on track. Coaching a client to identify the ‘busy-ness bug’ is the first step in helping him to be more efficient and effective with his time.

Pareto’s Principle states that roughly 20 per cent of actions produce 80 per cent of results, or 80 per cent of effects come from 20 per cent of causes. This principle is a simple and effective economic one that has been used for decades by business professionals to produce better results.

Coach clients by asking ‘Are you busy being busy?’ to focus their attention on the tasks that create results and they will be on track at least 20 per cent of the time – joke.

What Can We Do to Optimise or Streamline?

An organisation’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

–Jack Welch

On an NLP Train the Trainers course, Steve heard Dr Richard Bandler (co-creator of NLP) explain to his audience that optimising a process or strategy involves taking out redundant steps. He went on to explain that he used to take clocks apart and put them back together again and have parts left over – and his clocks would always work quicker. The joke was missed by many, but the principle of optimising is a valuable one for keeping a business on ‘the best track’.

Humans have a creative capacity for making things complicated. Asking clients this question on a regular basis ensures that they review their actions and find the simplest ways to achieve their goals. Think of optimisation as finding a new track, a shortcut to a destination. This approach can save a lot of meandering that takes time and effort and can result in missed opportunities and deadlines, which ultimately costs businesses money.

This approach can be summarised by the principle of Ockham’s razor, first developed by the Franciscan friar and philosopher William of Ockham. Ockham’s razor is more commonly described as ‘the simplest answer is most often correct’.

Are We Going in the Right Direction?

Everybody who goes through the business will make mistakes. The big question is how big will the mistakes be? How fast will they learn from the mistakes, and how quickly will they get the business in the correct direction?

–Fred DeLuca

When an aircraft takes off from London Heathrow heading to New York, it never exactly follows the planned flight path. The pilot is always making course adjustments for wind speed, air pressure, turbulence, fuel and weather, and constantly changing altitude, air speed and direction. Yet the plane is always heading towards its destination, albeit not in a straight line.

Making small course corrections to a business is a lot easier than having to completely reorganise a plan if that plan has gone completely off course. This valuable question can often reveal whether a business is off course and that the original plan is now unworkable. Asking the question reveals when the time has arrived to change from Plan A to Plan B and to then think of Plan B as the new Plan A.

As long as an individual, team, project or business is heading in the right direction, they tend to eventually get there.

What Do We Need to Stop Doing?

Don’t use a lot where a little will do.

–Buddhist proverb

This question is another way to help clients identify whether they’re off-track by being busy or have made a project more complicated than it needs to be and what has to stop.

While answering this question, clients start to identify tasks or steps in a process that they can stop doing and still achieve their aims or outcomes. Doing so releases valuable resources such as time and effort that can be diverted into more useful tasks.

Are We All Still on the Same Page?

When you’re surrounded by people who share a passionate commitment around a common purpose, anything is possible.

–Howard Schultz

Assuming that a company has regular meetings with updates on projects and milestones towards achieving its goals, it must still have regular reality checks to see whether all team members are still on the same page with the project. Decisions and commitments made at the start of a project may no longer be valid weeks or months later.

Remember that saying ‘a chain is only as strong as its weakest link’? It’s mission critical to know whether a team or team member has wavering commitment or is behind on a task, and to find out why. Adjustments can then be made sooner rather than later.

Many projects and businesses go off-track when assumptions are made that everyone is still committed to their decisions and a plan. Coach clients to engage regularly in this open, honest dialogue and to avoid making assumptions about commitment and engagement.