If your not good at CODA, can you really be successful?

You have someone who works for you and you're not quite sure how to coach them.  Why are they not more successful?  Why are they not hitting their goals?  It can usually be summed up in one of 4 general areas.

To evaluate our people we use the simple CODA.  That stands for Communication, Organization, Decision making, and Analysis.

Communication

• Can they communicate clearly to you?  Are they keeping you informed of what is happening or not happening?  Are they able to sum up their activities succinctly?  Or do they make a short conversation last for an hour?
• Are they able to communicate to the clients effectively, positively?  Do they make the interaction a good one for the company, making the client more loyal with each conversation?
•  Can they communicate to their peers in a humble, cooperative manner?  Do peers see them as a organizational leader or a cancer?
• Communication is also both verbal and written.  Are they good presenters?  Can they inspire and train well?  When they write, can they communicate without a long email exchange?  Can they put together a persuasive powerpoint presentation?  Is their grammar and spelling a negative or positive?

If they cannot communicate well, they will likely not be graded on the other skills.

Organization Skills

• Is this employee able to get to work on time?  Can they keep their work area clean and orderly?
• Does this person have a plan for the day?  Does this person forget assignments?
• Can this person put together a plan that includes all the necessary steps?

Organization skills make a person more productive.  A more productive employee will get more done in less time.  I find that an organized person is the busiest person.  But they also churn out more work than anyone else.

Communication and  organization are primarily personal skills.  They are both the skills needed to go to the next level in any organization.  

Decision making

This involves taking your analysis and doing something with it.  You don't want to be one who just thinks about things, you need to take thought to action.

A good decision maker takes all the things at their fingertips and points the direction.  Those that use this skill well are risk takers.  By choosing a direction, you are naturally NOT choosing another group of directions.

A problem well stated is a problem half solved.  That is the difference between analysis and decision making.  Great analysis involves getting data and doing something about it.  My most hated phrase is, "I don't like numbers."  Worst excuse ever!  Numbers are the language of business.

Famous basketball coach Bobby Knight used numbers to tell him who would be in his starting line up, who would come off the bench, who would guard whom.  He took the data, that is shooting percentage or plus minus or some other statistic, and would determine what it was saying to him.  Then he would make a decision.

If you don't gather data.  If you don't evaluate data.  You cannot make good decisions.

So, when I am sitting with someone, I ask them to evaluate themselves on these 4 criteria.  Which of these areas do they need the most help?  Can I offer them training in communication?  Can I help them determine which data to gather to make an analysis?  When they have all the analysis and yet they still make no decision or poor decisions, I know that is where I need to coach them.

Experience helps with decision making.  But you cannot get better at making decisions until you have the chance to actually make some decisions.

I remember the IBM executive who made a $20,000,000 mistake.  Someone asked if the executive was fired.  The executive's boss said "That was a VERY expensive training exercise!"