Strategy for Coaches 2011 Webcast Schedule

Wilmington, DE, February 22, 2011 --(PR.com)-- The webcast scheduled for 1st Quarter 2011 will focus on Coopetition: The Synthesis Of Competition And Cooperation and discuss how this concept can be applied to the coaching business. Traditional business strategy is organized around competition. Western culture encourages and sometimes requires competition in order to succeed, so we rarely question whether there are alternatives to competing with others.

A careful examination of nature shows both competitive and cooperative behavior. It is quite common for organisms to not only compete but also cooperate with one another, often times simultaneously. Members of a species may hunt in packs (cooperation) while also fighting for alpha status within the pack (competition). Particular behaviors exist on a continuum of pure competition on one end and pure cooperation on the other.

Ray Noorda, founder of the networking software company Novell, noticed a similar phenomenon in the business world. He coined the term coopetition to represent this. Coopetition, a synthesis of the words competition and cooperation, was designed to convey the dynamic relationship between the two concepts. Business often involves cooperation to create the market (the pie) and competition to divide up the market (one’s slice).

Game theory is the study of rational behavior in contested environments and offers scientific principles that can be used to predict the actions of others. Real-life situations are often extremely complicated and game theory only provides a model of that complexity. Game theory coupled with the concept of coopetition has resulted in new possibilities for profit and is worth a careful look.

This webcast will begin with a thorough introduction to coopetition and game theory, discuss numerous real world examples and finish with ideas for profitably applying the knowledge to the coaching business.

The webcast scheduled for 2nd Quarter 2011 will focus on the Blue Ocean Strategy. An amazing strategy for creating new markets through value innovation has been dubbed the Blue Ocean Strategy after a book by that name from W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.

Most companies try to outperform their rivals through incremental changes in price or quality - assessing what their competitors do and striving to do the same things better. As the market space becomes more crowded, supply overtakes demand causing products and services to become commoditized, encouraging price wars and rapid feature duplication among rivals. Markets that are well explored and already crowded with competitors are called "red oceans", because the only way to increase profits is by taking away market share from the competition. “Blue oceans” on the other hand represent uncontested market space - pools of demand and customers that have not been reached by any competitor.

Through intuition, trial and error or just plain luck, people stumble on strategies that have a proven track record of success. Although not likely intentional, the Blue Ocean Strategy was the strategy that started the coaching profession. After a thorough introduction to the Blue Ocean Strategy, the remainder of the webcast will show how a more complete implementation of the strategy could make the coaching profession far more lucrative for coaches while providing clients with an even better value proposition.

The webcast scheduled for 3rd Quarter 2011 will focus on Evidence Based Coaching. The term evidence based coaching was coined by Anthony M. Grant to distinguish between professional coaching that is firmly grounded in a theoretical knowledge base from coaching that was developed from anecdotal and other observations.

Evidence based practice requires that the practitioner use the best knowledge available, integrate this knowledge with their own expertise and skillfully apply this knowledge in the current context while considering the needs, values and preferences of their client. Fundamental questions that must be examined include what constitutes evidence, how to bridge the divide between theory and practice and how to access effectiveness. The webcast addresses these important questions.

The webcast scheduled for 4th Quarter 2011 will focus on cognitive development. The ability of an individual to manage complexity is a function of their cognitive processing. In 1984 Hunter & Hunter published a comprehensive study that showed cognitive ability was the number one predictor of successful job performance.

Most cognitive growth in adults involves learning new facts, skills and ways of doing things. This is often referred to as horizontal development, in contrast to vertical development, which is less common and refers to how we change our interpretation of experience and transform our views of reality.

This webcast will summarize what is currently known about cognitive development in adults. Several studies have shown that a type of learning, called transformational learning, facilitates cognitive development. The webcast will also look at transformational learning – what it is, how to do it and why it is believed to facilitate cognitive development.

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