Comments on: Digital Coaching, Catalysts and Sitting on Your Hands

By: alex

alex — Fri, 16 May 2008 05:06:15 +0000

I go with the digital coach idea

The coach arrives and teaches me

1) how to blog on wordpress
2) how to set up a web site
3) how to make my bt wireless broadband work
4) how to transfer my mobile phone list into my computer
5) how to play music from my i-pod through my computers
6) how to set up on flickr
7) how to have google reader and my own digital newspaper

This is a franchise across the UK

Alex

By: When You Need Help Figuring Out Your Computer And Your Digital Life, A Digital Coach Is The Ticket » MonkAtWork.com

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:14:17 +0000

[...] of priority. Some people would rather focus on other aspects of their work, rather than spend time debugging the processes involved in how they do [...]

By: Lloyd Davis

Lloyd Davis — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:54:38 +0000

Wow, thanks everybody – it’s great to see agreement and support from the people I most respect in this area. Much appreciated, especially the point about diversifying my knowledge of nanny/witch culture.

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:01:08 +0000

Agree and keenly suggest that you start as you mean to go on – you can provide a framework but not the doing. At the very first meeting, outline this clearly – you are building a competence and team structure in the organisation, not doing the job for them. Think KM – it’s far more valuable to the client if they learn how to do it than watch a supplier do it…

A tiny example (in my world) is writing useful community newsletters, which are a very modest part of the bigger picture.

I give them a template with useful points to consider at the top and the central points of the newsletter in the body but no copy. Or maybe I’ll co-author the first one using google docs, but it’s vital that clients know that they are totally capable of it, so they have to do it themselves… If they can’t we need to find someone in the org who can.

I will probably sit with them and go through the first one together with a pen and much waving of hands… but really try not to write it. Otherwise they won’t find their voice, they won’t know that it is do-able, and, most importantly, they won’t properly build the time required and decision-making processes into their management structures – without those you are implicitly supporting a culture of dependency (which I don’t buy into myself…)

By: David Wilcox

David Wilcox — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:52:21 +0000

Great piece Lloyd. If people knew more about the pain and effort in birthing social media, would they start the relationship in the first place?
Can it be more fun? Or will people (mostly) wait until There Is No Alternative but to get started? Dare one be honest as a consultant-coach? Are small incremental steps the way in? Maybe good for the client, but may not fit the consultant-coach business model.
I see why busking appeals … am I too late to learn?

By: Lee

Lee — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:00:41 +0000

I think you should be watching Nanny McPhee, not Mary Poppins:

“There is something you should understand about the way I work. When you need me but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me but no longer need me, then I have to go. It’s rather sad, really, but there it is”

By: gia

gia — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:53:13 +0000

What I’ve found is that unless there are people who are chomping at the bit to ‘have a go’, it’s incredibly difficult to actually get them to do something without you holding their hand through every single step… And even then it can be an excruciating process. In many circumstances what ‘doing a blog’ actually means is more work for the people involved. No one wants more work… and that won’t change whether you are holding their hands through the whole thing or not.

So in some respects the ideal situation would be more of a ‘Sound of Poppins’- thing where you come in, train them, set the whole thing up, get them to start things off themselves, ease your way out and THEN you are kept on a modest retainer indefinitely or until their project is finished in order to prod them a day or two a month.

It’s a small investment for them to make sure their efforts remain at a high standard AND that they actually *do* it.