What a coaching call looks like
Yesterday I had a great call with a coaching client. It started with a simple technical question, but moved pretty quickly into the more important underlying strategic concerns.
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The technical question we opened with was:
“Is there a way to run three reports at once so I don’t have to click them individually to get them into a single spreadsheet?”
A practical, technical-efficiency question.
We unpacked the real workflow behind it:
Multiple reports
CSV exports
Import into Google Sheets
Downstream formatting automation
Then we evaluated:
Is this minor friction?
Or is this custom development?
Is automation worth the build cost?
Would no-code tools meaningfully reduce effort — or just relocate it?
Conclusion: possible, but not worth the engineering overhead.
That alone is valuable — knowing when not to build.
But that converstation surfaced a deeper concern:
Real-life events that could take the client away from this work for a long time.
Now the question wasn’t: “How do I click less?”
It became: “What happens if I’m not here?”
That led to:
Identifying single-point-of-failure tasks.
Recognizing recurring annual processes that only one person understands.
Distinguishing evergreen workflows from time-relative info like “who’s on the board."
Exploring lightweight documentation: short videos, structured folders, task-based training.
Noticing which responsibilities already have partial delegation.
Seeing where ownership exists — and where it doesn’t.
Then deeper:
Why do team members stall when learning something new?
Why do volunteers hit a block and go silent?
Why does panic kill learning?
How do you assign responsibility before someone feels ready?
How do you build confidence instead of dependency?
The focus moved from software to human reality.
From “doing tasks” to:
Domain ownership
Clear assignment
Feedback loops
Personal recognition and validation
Creating safety to ask for help
Increasing the “bus number” (“How many people have to get hit by a bus before this breaks?” — Hint: “1” is not a great answer.)
By the end, the original technical question barely mattered.
The real outcome was this shift:
From: “I need to get this done.”
To: “How do I build a system that runs without me?”
Because coaching isn’t mere tutoring about which button to click.
It’s:
Evaluating effort vs payoff.
Reframing problems.
Surfacing hidden risks.
Placing strategy before tactics.
Turning anxiety into a plan.
Turning a technician into a leader.
And often, it starts with something as small as:
“Can I run three reports at once?”
All the best,
A.