Roger Martin who is the Dean of the Rotman School of Management here in Toronto and the author of three great books on business. The first is The Responsibility Virus which talks about the power of building true partnerships. The second is The Opposable Mind which talks about ‘integrative thinking’ and his most recent is The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage.

In this interview we take on:

• The journey ideas take – from ‘mystery’ to ‘heuristic’ to ‘algorithm’
• Why ‘design thinking’ could be considered a counter-cultural act
• How the beginning of change lies in changing the way we think
• Why the burden of proof can be impossible to meet (and what the implications of that might be)
• The power of projectization – and a company that’s showing just how powerful that can be.

You can find out more about Roger and his work and get access to a range of great material at www.RogerLMartin.com.

Listen to my interview with Roger Martin

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1. Three counter-intuitive truths about coaching in organizations

Box of Crayons’ flagship product is our Coaching for Great Work program, which gives managers and leaders practical coaching skills that stick.

In this article, I share three insights that stop coaching flourishing in organizations – and what you can do about it.

(Drop me a line if you’d like to learn more about Coaching for Great Work).

2. Why are you trying to save time?

Productive Flourishing is a blog I’ve only recently started to follow, and I like what I’ve read so far.

This article is a provocative little piece challenging you to get clear on “for the sake of what” you’re trying to be productive.

3. Are these three word ruining your life?

From Jonathan Mead, who writes on Illuminated Mind and is a regular guest writer on Zen Habits. These three words might be what’s getting in the way of you doing more Great Work.

Written by Michael Bungay Stanier.  Follow me on Twitter

I’ve spent the last three days training an excellent group of folks from Gartner. They’ve been the perfect bunch to work with – thoughtful, smart, both willing to challenge and willing to trust the process.

At the end of the three days I was offered up a piece of feedback that I’m still chewing over:

“It was obvious that you knew most of our names – but not all of them.”

It was true. There were two or three people who’s names I knew – but only sort of. And I didn’t want to get it wrong, so I didn’t say their names. And in a gracious way, they let me know that they knew that.

One of the truths about Great Work is that you can’t do it alone. This training, on coaching and engagement skills, is part of my Great Work – and the people who show up willing to be trained are as much part of “the mix” as my fellow trainers. The least I could do is know their names.

=> Is there anyone supporting you in your Great Work that you need to get to know a little better?

Friday’s are for wrapping things up.  Here are my favourite three blog posts on Great Work.

1. Jon Ingham summarizing his learnings about “Training 2.0″ – and how the old style of training just won’t be enough any more.

2. Seth Godin talking about why you should exceed expectations.  (A terrific distinction between “Good” and “Great”).

3. My article in Training Zone about three counter-intuitive truths about coaching in organizations.  The most controvrsial?  Abandon plans to build a coaching culture.

Where have you found your best insights for the week?

I’ve just had an article published in TrainingZone.co.uk about three (not-what-you-were-expecting) truths about coaching in organizations.

It’s a dilemma.  We all know coaching can be a useful intervention in organizational life, for the sake of both the individual and the company.  It’s one of the best ways to help Great Work flourish.

But for the most part, coaching isn’t having the impact it should.

So what’s going wrong?  And what can you do about it?

Here is the first of the three counter-intuitive insights I offer in the article:

1 Don’t create a coaching culture

‘We’re going to create a coaching culture’ is a commonly proclaimed goal, with some leader filled with visions of coaching reinventing life and work in that organisation.

But coaching alone is not always able to miraculously drive change, improve performance, increase happiness, make money and lift the level of engagement in an organisation. Coaching is a powerful tactic that is best used to support and achieve a specific business objective.

The focus on a ‘coaching culture’ runs the danger of confusing the means for the end, and it is a lack of context – why exactly do I need to use coaching? – that can undermine any attempts to get managers coaching. Commitment and engagement with coaching works best when there are two levels of context.

The first is the business context, and we’ve found that enhancing coaching skills works best when it’s serving a specific business purpose – for instance, building team resilience before a corporate re-branding and re-organisation, increasing key customer retention or reducing the churn of front-line sales staff.

The second is a personal context, or more bluntly: how will this help me and my work? Getting managers to see how coaching can be not just another thing to add to the to-do list, but rather a way of actually reducing their own workload while increasing the focus on their own ‘great work’ builds the likelihood of it being a tool that’s used. Context allows managers to see coaching as a support and a solution – and not just the latest HR trend.

You can read the full article here – and please feel free to comment on their site or on this.