Mentoring Take-Aways

On today's Mentor Q&A session, we discussed how a mentor might wrap-up the engagement with his mentee. The easiest ways is just to tell your mentee. But when I thought about it, I realized that I was gaining as much from these sessions as my partner. We've been meeting weekly for almost 2 months, and you'd think we'd run out of topics. Not so. My partner brings a specific topic to each session and we work it. The reward is in being able to address issues objectively, whereas in the workplace, being emotionally involved in an issue can cloud your thinking. It's like observing your past experiences from the outside, rather than from within.

But it also helps to have a good mentee. In our first session he listed a number of topics he wanted addressed: sales, career, projects, quotes, practices, staffing, etc. So we agreed to meet weekly and to pick one of the topics each week. He's done that, and most weeks telegraphs it ahead of time. Having a specific topic for the meeting, and a little time to prepare, makes it that much easier and meaningful for me as a mentor. As we get to know each other, the topics build up context. I drove away today thinking that we don't need to arbitrarily end our sessions. We'll know when that time is right - when we've run out of specific topics. Until then it's worth the investment.

These experiences provide a few good take-aways for future mentors, being:

1. Negotiate goals at the first session - as Debbie pointed out during the kickoff
2. Focus each session by agreeing on a topic in advance
   
3. Create continuity, context and familiarity through weekly sessions
   
4. When topics become scarce, reduce the frequency or wind-up the sessions
5. And most important: maintain a weekly blog so that you can share your experiences

Two more tips to consider:

• Starbucks is a good venue. It's noisy, but addresses our basic needs: caffiene, wifi, 'food', lots of people, free-songs-Tuesdays
• It's OK to discuss off-topic subjects: the bailout, elections, sports. I'm not saying we discuss them and I'm not saying we don't. I'm saying it's OK.

Regards to all,

Joe Longo

Link to Professional Services Knowledge Management - 10/2/08 Presentation

Today, PSVillager Andrew Nash, CEO of Navaroo Consulting, (and former COO, Broadvision and Partner, Deloitte Consulting), presented to our Mentoring group on the topic of Knowledge Management. Andrew is very steeped in Knowledge Management and gave an excellent presentation on the topic. We captured the presentation in GoToMeeting and posted it at Knowledge Management Presentation The recording is available for 14 days after post. It is roughly one hour long.

Overview
The presentation today helped dispel several myths regarding KM. The biggest myth … KM is just a repository. Instead, Andrew recommends the 4 pronged approach for KM: Enterprise repository; Wiki/Blog; Web conferencing; Social Networking. With a little effort and leveraging freeware, you can very quickly launch a KM system no matter how large or small your organization.

Other Big myths:

· Focusing on one area like service delivery. Much of the knowledge needed for delivery resides elsewhere within the company, so an integrated knowledgebase is key to success.

· While technology is an enabler to share information, the real work is up-front with capturing, transferring and codifying data. Preparing it for use in an organized manner. The most pervasive technology used for KM today … email. Who would have thought …

· Build it and they will come. Making any knowledgebase file centric vs. human centric will leave you with more lurkers than contributors. PUSH information out and recognize the outstanding contributions of the community members.

· There is no need for an FTE to manage the knowledge. For organizations of less than 50 resources, part-time distributed management of the KM is adequate. A good rule of thumb is once you reach the 50 – 100 resources level and depending how robust the information is that you are sharing, full-time community management and domain ownership will become necessary.

Thank you Andrew for a great presentation!

Debbie Stovall, PCC, Strategist
www.succcessrealities.com