Systemic Organization Coaching
Systemic Coaching at the Service of Organization Development.

• Systemic organization coaching to help you design and lead  complex systems :  matrix, network, multicultural, transversal, delegated, flat, virtual and distributed structures.
• Organizational coaching to focus your top 70 key players on pertinent challenges and vital transformations.
• To improve your company's effectiveness, systemic organization coaching can help optimize operational interfaces: between departments and divisions, international and intercultural and with the larger environnement.
• Organization Coaching can help you become more effective in collective decision making and follow-up action-plans, delegation, controls and results.
• Systemic organization coaching to design better communication flow.  Reduce rumors and other internal and external "noise", enhance pertinent information exchange.
• Organization coaching can develop a worthy collaborative culture actively focused on achieving measurable performance, results, ethics, quality and safety.
• Systemic organization coaching can help you prepare and implement transitions: restructure, merger, downsize, acquire, relocate, etc. Transform apparent crisis into  extraordinary opportunities.
• Organization coaching can help you better orchestrate and follow up all your organization's strategic and operational meetings, within a company-wide comprehensive systemic framework.  The result is fewer and better meetings.
• Systemic organization coaching can help develop an exciting company-wide "breakthrough" entrepreneurial leadership culture focused on achieving extraordinary results.

What is Organizational Coaching?

Beyond team coaching, an organizational coaching process or event concerns very large-group work (one hundred or more) focused on key organziational issues.  Typically, organizational coaching includes the simultaneous participation of the executive team and key corporate players originating from multipe formal or project teams.  This large-group coaching is focused on collectively facing exeptional issues and handling strategic organizational challenges.

Although a systemic organization coaching process can begin with prior team work within the executive team This is not a necessary prerequisite. Nonetheless, the organization coaching process will deliver results to the extent of the latter's collective commitment. To ensure success, the organization's leader and executive team therefore need to actively participate in the coaching process and model the expected commitment.

A systemic organization coach (and team or coaches) aims to accompany the corporate client system while it actively modifies its collective belief system (basic assumptions and frame of reference) and active operating principles which determine its behavioral culture,  Systemic organizational coaching provides some of the most powerful tools to transform the underlying or hidden organizational architectures which determine how corporations perform, and often underperform.

Whenever useful, a systemic organization coaching approach can concern international branches, major divisions, departments or units and often includes work within "strategic" transversal and intercultural project teams.

Whenever useful or strategic, the Métasysteme world-wide coach network can also partner and collaborate with your local or internal coach and consultant team.

SYSTEMIC ORGANIZATIONAL COACHING TO DEVELOP TRANSVERSALITY

It is a known fact: within most organizations, one plus one doesn't add up to much more than two. Accepting that state of affairs amounts to accepting the inevitability of pure operational losses.

If most corporations know how to recruit and retain excellent executives, managers and employees, the real systemic teamwork that ever takes place between these expert professionals often leaves a lot to be desired.  Furthemore, excessive forcus on leadership has often created counterproductive verticality and territoriality.  This state of affairs is reproduced in the way teams work together.

Consequently, almost all the "systemic" added value that could be expected from professional and operational interfacing is invariably lost in internal lack of cooperation if not blatant competition. As a result, most system interface issues are delegated upwards to top leaders.  These end up managing lower-echelon transversality issues instead of strategically leading the system as a whole.  This occurs even more dramatically within multinational contexts when headquarters spend most of its energy managing transnational organizational interface issues.

Consequently, corporate cultures which create internal competition by heraldinf personnal expertise regularly find their development and success limited by their incapacity to develop real systemic operational "interface management" competencies at all levels of their organization.

Beyond communication training and personal development programs and methods, modifying systemic interface management on an organizational level is a collective transformational process that can very successfully be accompanied by an organizational coaching approach.  Starting with your executive team or the top 70 key players in your organization, we can coach your company through a fundamental systemic paradigm tranformation that will help it capitalize on the potential added value to be gained from really effective transversal interfacing.

SYSTEMIC ORGANIZATIONAL COACHING FOR TRANSITIONING CORPORATIONS

Our twenty-year experience coaching leaders, teams and organizations allow us to underline the importance of that approach in accompanying transitioning systems while they are implementing mergers, acquisitions and relocations, when downsizing, designing new cross-company alliances, redefining missions, visions, corporate focus and projects.

Organization coaching processes can help transform what is often felt to be a period of uncertainty, of stress or of "crisis" by all the key corporate actors into an era of opportunity centered on developing new potentials and achieving unexpected extraordinary performances.  Organization coaching in transitioning systems can help develop collective focus and commitment to center all corporate energy on achieving a successful and lasting transformation. 

To give an example concerning mergers and acquisitions, it is often paramount to step beyond the passions that can emerge from having to decide what to retain from the original merging companies and what to let go.  This fight not only concerns the choice in "who to keep?" but also in "which active culture will win in the end?".  These all too common  merger or acquisition conflicts cause huge losses and can leave long lasting scars.

With an systemic organization coaching approach, the transition period which invariably accompanies a merger or an acquisition can become what it is supposed to be.  An era of innovation or opportunity to transform all the processes and cultures of all the partnering organizations to create an completely new and performing cultural ensemble.  A systemic organization coaching approach can serve to design and implement unprecedented growth and development opportunities to ensure the creation of a totally new future for the new corporation.

A systemic organization coaching process may or may not begin by coaching the senior executive team of the new ensemble.   Large group coaching work can also help reconfigure new corporate D.N.A.  This process can then be followed up within major divisions and septartments to lead the transition in the rest of the new organization.

ORGANIZATIONAL COACHING IN MULTICULTURAL CORPORATIONS

Depending on the issues and needs of a national (exporting), international, multinational or multicultural organization, a systemic organization coaching process may also concern work regrouping multiple export, inpatriate and expatriate teams and networks, international branches and divisions, strategic  development teams and representative offices. 

An organizational coaching process to develop internationalism and  transculturalism can also help design international and crosscultural transversal project teams to develop a really multicultural approach, capitalizing on diversity, to boost company innovation and measurable successes.

Whether on a national or international level, the success of an organization coaching process in a multicultural context is measured by a radical increase in company-wide lower level transversal operational cooperation.  This increases lower echelon responsibility and accountability.  A second obvious result of systemic organization coaching is the developement of a company-specific "metacultural" coherent identity.  This corporate identity creates a strong cement that helps align the whole system towards reaching organization goals.

To hear more about organization coaching, to obtain client references or to meet a coach from our network, contact us.

The following in-house group coaching and supervision program has been designed to develop operational effectivemenss across all possible boundaries existing within organizations.  It has been successfully implemented to accompany project leaders and middle managers in a number of corporations.

A "management supervision group" process is creatively designed to model a network structure and its collective developmental process over a reasonable lapse of time (one year min.).  These flat "learning environments" are structured as "systemic learning networks" and their goal is to perdure. Their creative and original network structure and processes are detailed below on this page. Within these co-coaching and co-learning mentoring environments, participants can indifferently choose to develop their executive, management, team leadership, followership and teamwork skills with a very practical approach and at their own pace.

Since 2001, ongoing monthly supervision and mentoring groups for executive and team coaching have been designed and led by Alain Cardon. These"systemically designed" mentoring groups have inspired the creation of the "management supervision groups" and mentoring groups today proposed for managers.

Management co-coaching and co-learning within "management supervision groups" aim to develop confirmed leaders, managers and executives in two principal dimensions:

• The professionalism, creativity and pleasure in their executive, team leadership, followership and teamwork competencies.  Most these competencies can  be coached and developed much more practically in a group context.
• The capacity to strategically develop their sales, their marketing, their products, their success strategies, their solution-centered and success-centered "business sense", each within their operational field.

SPIRIT

In these two dimensions and over a year-long cycle (one day per month) "management supervision groups" aspire to become "learning networks" or teams for each participating executive, leader and manager.

• These groups are resolutely practical and operational. Each participant develops leadership competencies, executive competencies and team-player competencies through continuous modeling and behavioral practice.
• They are co-learning experimentation environments where new managerial skills and executive stategies are actively tested rather than presented.
• These groups' structure and processes are designed to question, challenge, test and drive each one of its members to stimulate personal and professional growth and development.
• The group members practice positive confrontation of their differences and respect their diversity of background and approaches.
• For each manager and executive, these supervision or mentoring groups are also personal sharing and professional support network.

The structure of management mentoring and supervision groups is designed to permit multiple applications of Systems Analysis (further developed below) applied to the practice of executive leadership, team management and teamwork competencies.

The management supervision groups are not limited to the use of any one theoretical or conceptual field. It accepts and integrates all the participants' prior practical and theoretical training and approaches that apply to their executive and management practice and communication skills.

ETHICS

It is understood that within management collective coaching and mentoring groups:

• all work demonstated by each participant and
• all reference to precise organizational issues and situations
  remains strictly confidential.

Futhermore, the management collective coaching and mentoring groups accept and apply the coaching profession code of ethics as defined by the International Coach Federation.

ORGANIZATION

• Each participant commits to a first ten-day cycle (one day per month over a year's lapse of time, on tuesdays and/or thursdays), and can prolong by any number of five-day supplementary commitments. The calendar is determined by the participants, a year ahead of time.
• It continuously accepts new members (on a rotational basis) with a maximum limit of fifteen participants.

MODUS OPERANDI

The operating process of management collective coaching and mentoring groups is "emerging", delegated and evolutive.

Supervision group processes, operating principles and rules, and a good part of its day to day organization are co-defined by its members and are principally centered on the performing development of their executive and teamwork competencies.

These processes, rules, and operating principles are evolutive as they can be modified in the course of time depending on the group's maturation, the appearance of new objectives and issues, the arrival of new members, the definition of new work models.

Each management mentoring session is managed under the shared responsibility of all its members. This can concern:

• arranging for a work location,
• bringing real-life management, teamwork and leadership supervision and mentoring issues,
• coaching these management, leadership and team coaching and mentoring issues, and sharing commentaries and options for future development and improvement
• moderating the day's work and co-managing the group process
• moderating and/or coaching collective sequences concerning the group's processes,

All these responsabilities are assumed by each participant in turn on a volunteer basis and occur within the management group coaching and mentoring context.

RESPONSABILITY

Each each manager participant is fully responsible for his or her own learning process. This includes:

• the intensity, the rhythm and the content of their work
• proposing management, leadership and team real-life situations for group supervision
• their comprehension and the content of their personal conclusions following each coaching and learning sequence.

Each is therefore invited to be fully responsible for the consequences of their perceptions and communication, for regularly expressing their needs and for their professional choices.

Furtheremore, each is invited to actively participate in the group "co-management" process, to ensure its perfomance and the respect of its operating principles proposed by the group supervisor and validated by each and everyone.

SYSTEMS ANALYSIS

"Management supervision groups" operating principles rest on a shared strategic and "systemic" collective process. A Systems Approach structure permits the integration of individual and group work on several different levels:

• First as a diagnostic and developemental tool that can be applied to each "real life" management or team case study or problem proposed by any one or group of participants.
  

Case study or problem proposed by a participant.

• Second as a diagnostic and developmental tool to propose strategic options for the future management practice of the participant who proposes the case study.or problem for supervision or mentoring.
  

Strategic options for the participant who presents the case or problem.

• Third as a diagnostic and developmental tool to deliver future options to the 'here and now" manager coaching the participant to help clarify his or her management or team "real life" case study or problem.
  

Supervision or mentoring of the participant's coaching manager within the Meta-management environment.

• Fourth as a diagnostic and developmental tool applied to the Meta-management process and group, a metaphor of a "learning network" or team within peer or hierarchic relationships depending on situations and perceptions. This level permits a continuous reflexion on the operating modes of the management mentoring process and guarantees it's potential for evolution.
  

Questioning of the management mentoring group operating modes as a metaphor of team processes

• Fifth as a diagnostic and developmental tool applied to the supervision and modeling proposed by the group supervisior, and to search for new creative management and teamwork options for the future of the participants' profession.
  

Group supervisor and coaching practice level

The analysis and integration of all these different levels permits:

• The simultaneous application of Systems Analysis in multible related realms revealing numerous parallels characteristic of a systemic management practice.
• The discovery of numerous options for development of each participant's future practice in both management and team player situations.
  

This learning process is profitable both on a personal and professional level for each participant. It concerns all potential management and teamwork interpersonal interfaces within the Meta-management mentoring group as a "learning environment" network or team.

THE "LEARNING TEAM " ENVIRONMENT

As the interaction between these different learning levels demonstrate, the management supervision and mentoring group is designed as a coherent evolutive whole. It is the equivalent of a learning "network team" structured to permit experimentation, modeling and personal development through a permanently evolving collective process.

In that light it's seasonal and life cycles, its operating modes, its internal processes and the complexity of its contunuously reconfigured internal interfaces make it a collective "systemic experiment" that permits:

• The exploration and learning of diverse approaches and techiques for breakthrough management and teamwork practices.
• Numerous opportunities for management and team development in a collective coaching and mentoring context, for each participant to professionally experiment and grow.