The Daring Way™
At Daring Futures, we’re all about realising ambition – yours.
As a boutique consultancy, we offer a unique blend of research and development, with coaching for execution. We serve technology leaders and their transformation efforts as they design, deliver and grow their digital products and services. The Daring Way™, has been designed to help leaders and their teams answer 3 fundamental questions:
- What should we do next?
- How should we do it?
- How should we be together?
The work done together in answering these questions, yields insights to support the clarification of the leadership challenge, the formulation of effective strategy, and the profitable execution of these. These questions are the distillation of our years of experience, and form the 3 principles which permeate the Daring Way™. These principles are:
- Discover – surfacing insights, to support the design of effective strategy
- Deliver – strategic execution as learning, and the quest for excellence
- Delight – harnessing intention and outcome in the service of colleagues and customers
Each principle has its own practice which, when executed together, become mutually reinforcing. The Discover, Deliver, Delight™ playbook contains the finest collection of Discovery, Delivery, and Delight plays, each designed to support our work as we weave together these 3 core practices, creating your own playbook – your Daring Way™. This then, is how we realise your ambitions.
1 - Understand the Current Condition
The first step we take in the Daring Way™ is to understand the current condition, in just enough detail, to be clear about the challenge and context for the engagement. We use our Daring Conversations diagnostic play as a guide.
3 - Choose the Partnership you want
The next step is to work with the role (or roles) to define the partnership model wanted for delivering the support. We call this process ‘designing the alliance’, which can be flexed throughout the engagement, to best suit everyone’s needs.
4 - Define the Delight we're striving for
Next we begin to define the initial project outcomes and set our direction by answering the question, “What does Delight look like?”
The initial practice of Delight may begin with a play such as the team agreement. Over time your Delight practice may grow and evolve to encompass other Delight plays, however, you are in control of this - it’s your ambition, your project. You may choose to do any or all of the work executing the plays yourself, which is fine with us, we’re here to serve your ambition.
5 - Focus the initial Discovery
The process of engaging with the initial Delight play surfaces uncertainties and risks, and this is entirely normal. These form the initial work items to be tackled by the Discovery practice. We chose the most appropriate Discovery play to investigate them in sufficient details to move forward. Equally, we might intuitively know where Discovery practice should begin. Either way, here’s where the choices are made regarding the starting point for the Discovery practice work, and thee selection of the appropriate Discovery plays to work with.
6 - Design the initial Delivery
Next, we find that engaging with the initial Discovery play identifies a prototype or pilot to seed the work of the Delivery practice. Once again, the appropriate Delivery play is chosen to initialise the work in this practice, the output of which is connected to the Discovery and Delight practices, creating feedback for the Discover, Deliver, Delight™ virtuous cycle.
7 - The Journey continues...
Whilst you may not have realised it, you are now on your journey, building the 3 practices of Discover, Deliver, Delight™ as you create your own Daring Way™. And we'll course correct as we go, based on the insights these 3 practices yield, as we head towards your own Daring Future.
If you’d like to know more about creating your own Daring Way™, implementing the Discover, Deliver, Delight™ playbook, or how we might be able to support you in your journey towards your own daring future, contact us now.
“According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”
Choose The Partnership To Serve You
Using the Daring Way™, we share our playbook (Discover, Deliver, Delight™) which is designed to simplify complexity and amplify the impact of collaboration. You can either choose to work with the playbook on your own, or choose a partnership model based on the services below and work with us. In this way we’ll support you, so that you can confidently build and operate your own elegant solutions, and together, we’ll build your own Daring Way™.
Executive Coaching
This type of coaching engagement is 1-to-1, where the agenda is set by you, and everything we discuss is held confidentially. Executive coaching can provide the following benefits:
- Highlight Blind-spots - less obvious when things are going well, so we look for what our clients haven’t seen.
- Honest Feedback - we’ll say what most people have not dared not say to you; sometimes we’ll be introducing you to the elephant in the room. How else will you know, and grow?
- Designed Alliance - the coaching environment we’ll be co-creating is a safe place to think through various topics against an agreed framework of what is in your best interest. Discover is where we establish the topics and framework of our work together, which can be revisited at any time.
Team Coaching
With a team coaching engagement, one of our ICF accredited coaches (or pair of coaches) is working with the team right where the action is, as the team works together. This can be intense and emotionally challenging work, as we explore the team dynamics in real-time. Interventions here are designed to enhance team members’ appreciation of each other and skills in working together, and with other teams. Benefits include:
- Rapid Formation - supporting the establishment of the team, or a new beginning for an existing team through a new project, strategy, major initiative, fiscal year, or business cycle.
- Enhanced Capabilities and Relationships - enabling team members to go beyond preconceptions of their roles, to stretch their capabilities, whilst developing richer collaborative connections within the team.
- Improved Leadership and Impact - helping the team improve its leadership and performance, and the processes by which performance is achieved, through reflection and dialogue.
Organisation Optimisation Coaching
At the team-of-teams level, one of our ICF accredited coaches (or pair of coaches) is working with the leadership team, focussing on the health of the organisation itself. Whilst we take a holistic view of the enterprise, taking into account people, culture and processes, which can provide the following benefits:
- Improved Alignment - when the leadership team is cohesive and functioning in a healthy way, the alignment of strategy and action permeates throughout the organisation.
- Increased Engagement - a united leadership team eliminates multiple competing directives, allowing employees to rally around the work. And the increased psychological safety created means they can bring more of themselves to their work.
- Culture of Collaboration - the virtuous cycle of alignment, engagement, and safety creates the conditions needed to amplify collaboration.
Knowledge & Skills Transfer
Daring Futures are experts in producing and delivery learning and development materials, and successfully transferring these to our clients, so that they can continue to develop the work themselves. In this way, we support the building of our clients’ adaptive competence. Benefits include:
- Improved Flexible Deployment - with an audit of the current state of the organisation’s talent, contrasted with the capability demands of realising the vision, gaps and opportunities can be identified.
- Social Network Analysis - by understanding how work is actually done, resources can be allocated to nurture and support key roles and relationships.
- Operating Model Optimisation - with insights into the organisation’s capabilities and social architecture, authorities and processes can be targeted for improved operational agility.
But don't just take our word for it...
One Of The Finest.
A mutual colleague introduced Andrew to our management team a year ago. At the time we were about to start a visioning exercise.Our product, Prelude, had pivoted from Education K20 to B2B training and from a traditional blended learning tool to an online resource for virtual teams.
Over the ensuing several months, Andrew guided our team through a dynamic, rigorous process of review, inquiry, and analysis.
His global perspective and deep insights were invaluable. Ultimately, Andrew enabled us to transform our thinking about realising Prelude’s full potential to deliver optimal value for our partners and clients.
The positive results are already started to show. Andrew is not just one of the smartest most industrious people we’ve met, he is also one of the finest. His warmth, humour, and generosity of spirit enlivened every one of our virtual meetings throughout. We wholeheartedly believe that anyone who has the opportunity to work with Andrew is fortunate indeed.
Trusted Advisor.
Andrew understands the value of education, coaching and behavioural change when it comes to improving organisational agility.There is no person I would trust more than Andrew in this regard.
He focuses on the long-term needs, making education valuable to the organisation rather than just a worthless label.
Andrew has an excellent career ahead of him, and if you have the opportunity to employ him, then I have no hesitation in recommending Andrew.
C-Suite CoachING.
I have had the pleasure of working with Andrew over the last year on a large scale financial services business agility transformation.Andrew is an excellent C-level coach with a particular focus and skill set around culture and leadership, which is a huge asset when working with senior leaders.
I wholeheartedly recommend Andrew and look forward to working with him again in the future.
Open And Honest.
Andrew is one of the most well read and well connected coaches I have ever met.The sheer breadth of his knowledge and his deep understanding of a variety of business and culture change models and techniques combined with his strong ethics enables him to succeed in many different environments.
Andrew's approach is very customer orientated his coaching style enables people to grow their skills and abilities quickly and seamlessly.
Andrew is open and honest, always prepared to help and never afraid to challenge the status quo in a constructive manner.
We are miles from where we started thanks to Andrew.
Can't wait to work with him again!
Outstanding Coaching Skills.
I cannot recommend Andrew highly enough, words will not truly reflect how knowledgeable and how much of an outstanding coach he is.The explanations of difficult topics were described without fail in a way that really allowed you to understand. Andrew always ensures that your learning is depend with examples you can relate to.
This is not just accomplished by his outstanding coaching skills and ability to understand each individual, it also comes from his genuine interest in your life allowing you to visualise relevant examples reflective of your own learning.
I met Andrew as coach who I hoped to learn from, now 3 months down the line with my agile knowledge exceeded beyond my imagination I leave with better outlook on life and the working world all because of who I would now deem a friend as well as the most knowledgeable guy I have ever met.
A Visionary And A Shaper.
Andrew is the one of the most well read and insightful culture & leadership agility transformation advisories I know.Andrew pointed me towards Trust Quotient, Spiral Dynamics Integral, the Theory of Everything, and Extreme Ownership. Andy helped me to hone my skills with non-violent communication, Organisational Change Assessment Instrument (OCAI), and ADKAR.
Strategic Thinker And Passionate Doer.
I have had the pleasure of working with Andrew a couple of times as a colleague and ongoing as a business coach.Andrew's passion and advocacy for agile practices is contagious, his open, pragmatic and honest approach and his people skills develop a real 'can do' attitude within the teams he works with; expertise and his own personal investment in learning brings leading and even bleeding edge thinking to the table and makes him an incredibly valuable advisor, coach and mentor.
He fits easily into the role of strategic thinker or passionate doer and is respected by his colleagues and clients alike!
Well-Read And Thoughtful.
Andrew has lots of well-deserved and articulate recommendations. It goes without saying he's a fab transformation coach.He is indeed incredibly well-read and thoughtful coach. I liked another aspect of Andrew’s work, that's was the ability to provide folks entirely new to Agile short snappy upbeat training sessions - topics that might seem dull to other loftier coaches were brought alive in an accessible, meaningful and engaging manner.
Andrew can adapt his style to make novices feel new ways of working are for them. Someone mentioned ethics? Andy cuts out the nonsense we face daily and gets to the nub of what makes working life sweeter - positive relationships. I had a blast Andrew.
Great job!
Highly Collaborative.
His enthusiasm and highly collaborative style enabled us to build a high performing team in what was a very chaotic and dispersed programme.He has very strong coaching skills and can build effective working relationships and add value to both teams and individuals very quickly.
As a consultant he brings a wealth of knowledge to the role and can apply this very effectively to solve the problems that his clients present him with.
I would not hesitate to bring Andrew into future programmes should the opportunity present itself.
Andrew delivered real value in three particular areas, those being Agile facilitation with elaboration teams, Coaching activity with the senior programme team, and delivering a Kanban solution for the Dependent Systems team.
Extensive Experience.
I have worked with Andrew for the last 18 months on a flagship government project utilising Agile development methodologies.I came to the project with no background in Agile delivery and with extensive experience of successful delivery using waterfall based methodologies. Andrew tutored me in the various approaches to Agile development and backed this learning up with his own actions, Andrew lives and breathes Agile.
Andrew can couple his Agile theories with extensive experience in software development and this has allowed him to support me in a difficult role (Solution Architect) by providing practical examples of how an Agile delivery can still provide the base Architecture and deliver value early.
As well as the practical aspects of Agile, Andrew has coached me in the softer skills required to be an effective Agile practitioner, providing an overview of techniques for decision making, problem solving and conflict resolution, providing an environment in which I could practice those skills safely and then supporting me as I used them in the delivery of my projects.
Andrew has facilitated my transformation from Agile Cynic to Agile champion by being an amazing coach. I now feel confident in adopting Agile for any future project that I am involved in as either a leader or a consultant.
Natural Coaching Approach.
Clarifying your direction and goals in business is not always easy.Through powerful questions Andrew helped me to explore and identify what I wanted to achieve and have the courage to create strategies to enable me to realise them.
Andrew has a natural sense of curiosity and a manner which quickly puts you at your ease.
He is very knowledgeable combining a commercial focus with a natural coaching approach which allows him to get the most out of people.
I would highly recommend Andrew and look forward to working with him again in the future.