Corporate Coaching - a new Business Concept?

The word coaching is often heard as a way out when managers are faced with managerial problems; or, privately, when people need a catalyst to help them dealing with seemingly insurmountable problems in their lives, the so-called life-coaching. And I am aware that this is only a very rough categorisation of the term. The idea I am pursuing goes beyond that and I am trying to combine both, coaching and consulting; let me call it Corporate Coaching.

As Performance Improvement Consultant, and I have been doing this for more than 16 years, one goes into clients’ companies and improves what there is to improve in order to gain financial and non-financial benefits for those clients – we install KPIs, implement planning tools, we close communication gaps and train management, etc, etc; the list is endless. Every Consulting Company promises a knowledge transfer from consultancy to client so that the latter would not be left alone and helpless after the project. But of course that is sheer marketing on behalf of the consultancy, hence rather fictional. There are a few concepts and methods of how to attain this knowledge transfer, but they are far from being as sustainable as they are promised and supposed to be.

So what should one do in order to ensure that all newly implemented management tools will remain within the company in a sustainable manner? That is where Corporate Coaching comes into the equation. It is a concept similar to “Help them so they can help themselves”. A coach is hired, he undertakes an analysis of the operation, detects where and how immense the problems are, he suggests a project, and in this very project, managers and key staff of the company will function as consultants or project manager. The coach is there to do what the writing on the tin suggests – coach! He will train project managers and consultants, set up the project and its governance, and play a vital role in the background.

Doing it this way, all the gained knowledge will stay in the client's company. Also, all management tools will have been developed by their potential users, hence ownership is guaranteed from the beginning. The role of the coach is to challenge and question all those tools and elements of the management system and give advice and steer; the client will get the desired input from the outside.

Advantages: Such a project would be a lot cheaper than any other consulting project and the results absolutely sustainable and not any less beneficial. Also, all participating managers and key staff would be trained extremely well and intensively and could tick off major items on their personal development plan.

Disadvantages: Unfortunately, such a project could take longer and should only be undertaken within smaller to medium-sized companies or departments within big companies. Due to the length of the project the cost pressure should not be too high and human resources deployed by the clients’ companies would need some spare time to participate.

I have been doing this for a few years, even successfully, but those projects came into life more out of sheer co-incidence. What I’d like to do is to discover the market a little and see if my ideas are any feasible.