Ensuring a Decision Maker acts upon their advice is the Business Coach's hardest task.
A decision maker may ignore the advice of a Business Coach if a trusted colleague contradicts it. Even incontravertable evidence can be ignored.
The Business Coach has a number of choices at this juncture.
1. Drop the issue.
2. Build the trust of the decision maker until they trust the Business Coach more than their own staff.
3. Find a trusted intermediary to convey the message.
4. Escalate the problem.
Each of the approaches have their strengths and weaknesses.
1. Drop the issue. This is the easiest solution for the Business Coach. This is the best approach when the project has a proper issue/risk management process.
Unfortunately, when the project does not have an issue/risk management process, the issue can be easily ignored. The issue may have severe consequences for the project and as a result to the business coach. The business coach can even be blamed for not raising the issue when it become a real problem.
2. Build Trust. This is the optimal solution. When the decision maker trusts the Business Coach, they will instinctively act on the advice even if contrary to the advice of other staff that they may trust more.
David Maister's "Trusted Advisor" give an excellent approach to building trust based upon putting the needs of the other person above your own.
Trust building takes time. It may be that the issue needs to be addressed before the Business Coach can build the trust. An example would be where a Project has reached the point where they need to commit to particular course of action (e.g. Buy expensive software) and the Business Coach has identified a potential issue with the software. The problem for the decision maker is that delaying the purchase will delay the project which results in higher costs. The risk of buying the wrong software is that is may be unusable or may lock the project into paying for expensive upgrades from the vendor. The decision maker will feel safer buying the software because it will progress the project. Getting the decision maker to take a different course of action in this event will require a great deal of trust in the Business Coach, particularly when their own staff are advising them to progress.
3. Find a trusted intermediary to convey the message. Find someone that the Decision Maker trusts and get them to convey the message. This is the best option after building trust directly. The problem is finding the person and then getting them to trust you so that they will then pass the message on.
4. Escalate. This is the most difficult and dangerous option available to the Business Coach from a personal perspective. It is unlikely that they will be thanked for escalating a problem, and it is very likely they will be accused of trouble making.
Ultimately it is a moral issue whether a Business Coach escalates an issue. Their responsibility to the project is to identify issues and raise them with the project decision maker. It is the responsibility of the decision maker to resolve the issues. The question is whether a business coach has a greater responsibility to the organisation in general and the eventual business sponsors specifically to ensure the issue is resolved.
A business coach should escalate the issue. The responsibility to escalate issues should be written into the contract of employment between the Business Coach and the Employing Organisation. This will protect the business coach from the inevitable back lash from escalating issues. (See "A bit of Fun")
Posted by chrismatts at May 25, 2003 6:25 AM