Developing an Evaluation Strategy at OptiCom
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With these five practices firmly in mind, let’s revisit OptiCom and
see how they developed a winning evaluation strategy for coaching,
and along the way, put the full deployment of coaching on much
stronger footing. The first order of business was to respond to the
advisory board’s request to evaluate the business impact of the pilot.
Given how the pilot was positioned (vis à vis the five practices) and
the fact that only 10 participants were being coached, Jacqui decided
to take a risk and push back on the board’s request to evaluate
the pilot.
Jacqui arranged a meeting with the board’s leader and shared her
concerns about the evaluation. Then she asked the leader the question
that turned the tide of the conversation: What are your business
issues, and how can coaching help? The advisory board leader
was the executive VP of the point-of-sale business unit (BU). They
were planning a major foray into the consumer electronics market.
He said that what kept him up at night was that “we couldn’t make
the mistakes of the past and keep hiding in our own silos.” He went
on to explain that he was concerned that his direct reports—each
a VP of a division—were not collaborating quickly enough or
effectively enough to penetrate the new market. Moreover, he said,
several of the VPs seemed slow to engage their respective divisional
leadership teams on achieving project goals. Jacqui replied by saying
that full deployment of the coaching initiative could successfully
address these issues. They agreed that the focus of the pilot evaluation
would be limited to lessons learned and point out ways to
maximize the success of full deployment. Jacqui had her work cut
out for her, and she turned to Michael to develop the evaluation
strategy.
A good evaluation strategy is really a good business strategy.
Going through the discipline of developing the evaluation strategy
often brings added clarity to accomplishing the business strategy.
Evaluation represents the ultimate “so what?” question. Implicit
within this question is having business and learning leaders being
held accountable for results. Table 11.2 summarizes the fruits of
Jacqui and Michael’s labors to develop an evaluation strategy that
responded to the business leaders’ issues. This document chronicles
Table 11.2 Evaluation Strategy for Full Deployment of Coaching at OptiCom: