A Day in the Life of a Coach: Sean Cunningham: June 17, 2010
It’s a common theme for coaches and students alike at this point, but the alarm goes off really early again today. In those first few moments after the static-filled radio station wakes me, I wonder why it is that I choose to live on five or six hours of sleep for 30 days straight. Then I remember the shining moments from each day; the instants when I realize that I’ve just made a change in someone’s life. That’s worth getting up for. With that, my feet hit the floor and I head toward something like consciousness.
Forty-five minutes later and I’m sitting for a breakfast of fruit and eggs in the Owen lobby. Joining me this morning is my fiancé, Lindsay. In Accelerator, juggling a relationship with the demands of the program can prove difficult. Pushing back against those demands requires us to carve time out of the day to find quality time. Today it’s a half hour of breakfast together. Tomorrow it may be a half hour talking about our days before going to bed. It’s not much, but it works to keep us connected.
After finishing breakfast and walking Lindsay to her car, the time arrives to conduct my first morning check in with my new group. Suddenly I’m remembering something that I forgot to set up yesterday… a contact list. At five minutes to eight I’m still waiting for two of my students. Fortunately they’re all present and accounted for when class starts at 8:00.
This morning Dave Owens delivers a lecture on managing the innovation process. I’ve heard this lecture at least once before, but it’s one I never get tired of hearing. Dave’s message is quite simple, innovation doesn’t have to be the result of a random stroke of genius. Organizations cultivate innovation by having a process to manage it. As I sit engaged, I hope that the students see the parallels between Dave’s lecture and the process we’ve been teaching them to use to build their own projects.
At 9:30, after a brief break, the students venture upstairs to for another economics lecture with our very own Luke Froeb. I’m disappointed I won’t get to sit in on his lecture and listen, but it’s time for a coach’s meeting.
In today’s meeting, we’re talking about the changing responsibility of coaches in the team dynamics. Since the students now grasp the fundamentals of the focus model, our goals no longer lie in teaching the process, but in improving the ideas. We must act more like consulting managers, offering feedback and critique of ideas, rather than as educators.
Before closing, Cherrie informs us of the return of an old Accelerator Coach tradition: The Coach’s Whistle. Today, The Coach’s Whistle is awarded to Erin for not only being a great mentor for her students, but also for stepping up to take on numerous leadership roles in the program. Way to go, Erin, you deserve it!
Cherrie must leave the meeting early to deliver the evaluation results of our most recent deliverable, the Ghost Deck. Having already seen Cherrie’s comments, I begin preparing for my team’s reaction to their impending 7th place finish. I’m also realizing that I may not be reaching them with my current explanation of what a ghost deck should look like. I begin considering alternative ways to teach the concept.
The last big Oasis session before the dress rehearsal begins. Despite their hard work, the team’s ideas still aren’t coming together. After repeated reminders, the team finally asks Michael Burcham to come in and listen to their idea. If you’ve ever heard Michael critique a business plan, you can guess what happened next. He applied the pressure, and it was certainly difficult for the team to respond to, but the story began to crystallize. These folks were responding with answers that didn’t even exist five minutes before. After Michael leaves, the team finally seems to have a clear direction for their plan. The team grabs their lunch and continue to power through their project. Their goal for the day is to have their powerpoint 90% complete by 4:30… three hours away.
I don’t return quite as quickly to the team room following lunch. No, for me it’s time for my coaching feedback. Brian and Cherrie take the time to go over the results of the student feedback forms with me, confirming what I had already been thinking. I am an awesome coach! Well, my team thought I was an awesome coach, and I am gratified to hear that they were learning as much from me as I was learning from them. We talk about how to replicate this success with my second team and how to resolve some of the weaker areas of my coaching style. Feedback complete, I return to my team.
I am impressed with the progress the team has made in my absence. Everyone has a task to complete, and everyone is working. What impresses me more, however, is the way that Meredith has really stepped into this leadership role and started to own it (“owning it” being a phrase my students hear quite a bit).
The night before we had talked about her progress and her performance as a leader on the Oasis project. I was concerned that she wasn’t taking control of the group. We realized that the kind of leadership style I was pushing her toward wasn’t the kind of leadership style that would work with her personality. So we started discussing what kind of leadership style would work with her personality. Like I said, I’m learning as much from the students as their learning from me.
Watching Meredith today is like watching a whole new person. She’s moving around the room, quietly checking on progress, assigning tasks, and generally paying attention to what everyone is doing, while at the same time keeping her workflow up. The group is responsive and respectful of this new, confident, in-control Meredith. When she speaks, she no longer has to raise her voice, rather, the group stops to listen.
Remember when I talked about shining moments? This is one of them. I don’t know if it’s something I said, the fact that she finally got a full night’s sleep, or because she finally stopped listening to me and just started doing things her way, but it is just a joy to sit back and watch her work. I don’t even feel like I need to be in this room, because she has got this covered.
At 4:30, my team has turned in their 90% presentation and it is time once again for a lecture from Dave Owens. This time, the lecture is on the actual process of innovation. To demonstrate how these processes work, Dave shows a video from his former workplace, IDEO. This is another lecture and video I’ve seen a few times, but it’s one that I still enjoy.
Dave’s lecture ends, and we exit to the lobby for our last meal of the day. Barbecue chicken and cous-cous provide only a brief respite before we must return to work, this time on the Bridgestone project. Team 3B, my second team, left Bridgestone with a solid hypothesis, so we don’t spend much time discussing it before moving right on to the hypothesis structure. Meredith and Bram leave at 7:00 to celebrate their talent show win from Saturday night. Down two members and having not worked in Averbuch before, the team still knocked their deliverables out, with minimal help from me, in just an hour and a half. This left them plenty of time to delegate research responsibilities and plan tasks for the next meeting.
At 8:30 I thought it was time to go home, but the AcceleraDores, my first team, inform me that they’re planning to stay to finish some last minute powerpoint work on the Oasis project. They may be tired, and they may be disappointed in how they finished on Lexus, but this team just won’t give up. Inspired by their commitment, I follow them upstairs hoping they can maintain their agenda to complete everything in just two hours.
It’s amazing to me how focused these teams can be when they align on a clear, common goal. Again, I think the team’s ability to meet tonight’s goal has more to do with the fire their new leader is lighting for them than because of anything I’ve been doing.
At 10:30 the day is finally over. Objectives have been achieved, and deliverables have been submitted. It is time to go home. Lindsay, keep the front porch light on for me.