What is Bikeshedding?
Bikeshedding is a term used as a synonym for Parkinson’s law of triviality.
C Northcote Parkinson is known for "Work expands to fill the time available", but also "The time spent on any item will be in inverse proportion to its cost and importance". The latter is known as Bikeshedding due to this illustration Parkinson provided:
​Executives meet to discuss two new projects: an atomic reactor and a company bike shed. The reactor is complex and massively expensive, and non-experts risk embarrassment if they speak up, so it gets approved in two and a half minutes. Everyone knows about bike sheds, and everyone has an opinion, so it is debated for hours. |
Bikeshedding & Coaching
So why am I writing about this here? Well, I wanted to think about that in a coaching context. As coaches, we need to enable our clients to perform - better for themselves and better for their stakeholders. Should we try to avoid coaching sessions from a focus on "busy work", or Bikeshedding?
A coaching session is what it is. Our client brings to a session something that they want to discuss, something that is a challenge for them. Are we, as coaches, to challenge if that is really what the coaching session should be used for? My opinion is, Yes, we should challenge. We are contracted, employed, paid and trusted to coach our clients towards achieving the goals they set out; set out when we discuss the purpose and objectives of the coaching engagement. If we don't challenge, our clients may remain in their comfortable place - discussing the bike shed rather than the atomic reactor - not achieve their goals. If they don't achieve their goals, then the value of the session is diminished and the whole premise of coaching is diminished in they eyes of clients and sponsors.
When to challenge?
1. In Contacting
The first place to be challenging in our engagement is during the contracting session we hold with our clients. My preference is to devise a set of high level goals that the client hopes to achieve in coaching and then to explore their values, beliefs, envrionment, issues and priorities. I then work with the client to unpack what they initially thought they would like coaching to cover for them. It is my desire to determine the root causes of issues, deep-seated blockages that surface those perceived problems, so that I'm coaching the client on the right topics. This provides my client with a coaching plan that gives placeholders for some or all of the sessions ahead. I then like to create a thread that connects the sessions and back to the contracting, so when we conclude our coaching engagement it makes it easier to review results against goals. Note it is essentail that we're not prescriptive. There always needs to be flexibility for the client to bring other topics to coaching or to re-order priorities.
2. In Coaching
Next we challenge the Client in the coaching session - Why is this particular topic important to you today? What value will resolving this bring to you or your stakeholders? Then, be flexible, be curious, but if the client is already complete in the thinking around the topic, close it out - properly but cost effectively. Ask what's next - We've got 45 minutes left, what else from your goals would you like to cover? Maximise the time and opportunity to walk with the client through the fields of worries, concerns and topics that are really obstacles or problems for them.
I've seen several situations lately where clients are unprepared for their session and are not bringing topics to the discussion. Let's not be passive and support the client's indifference (there may be valid reasons for the client wanting to revisit past topics) but challenge this if we think it is purely out of apathy. What is it that you are avoiding covering in our session today? Tell me about some significant challenges you are having that are more important to you and your business than this.
3. In Review
When a coaching engagement is approaching its conclusion, the final conversation for me is generally a close-down session. Here I ask the client to review their success at achieving the goals that they set out in contracting. It will be evident here, through challenging questioning, if the topics covered in the coaching conversations were ones that support the predefined goals, one that supported other goals which became relevant over time, or simply supported no relevant goals at all - they we the results apathy and lack of rigour in the coaching relationship. If we get to this point and the client's reflection on their development through coaching did not meet their goals then we've not succeeded as a coach. As coaches we need to bring this into our reflective practice - and/or our supervision - to drive development in our skills.