It’s an unfortunate fact that corporate mentoring programs often fail within the first six to ten months. Akram Sabbagh suggests that this can be because there is too much focus on the mentoring process and comparatively little focus on implementing a well-structured program.
“These things don’t just run themselves. Apart from having a budget set aside, a successful mentoring program has a clear pattern and structure to it, with specific events and actions required at specific points in the program’s evolution.
“Managing and maintaining the enthusiasm and energy levels throughout the program has to be a core concern.
“It starts with ensuring that there is genuine, committed support from the very top. As the program unfolds, action has to be taken at key points to maintain momentum. This is a balancing act because, while program participants will be looking for concrete pay-offs in the near term, the program as a whole has to be given time for an organisation to realise the incredible (read ‘ROI’) benefits it can deliver .
“In our experience it is essential to make a two-to-three year commitment and to stick to your guns. Nothing kills a mentoring program faster than the suspicion that senior management is having doubts about it.
“The bottom line is that it takes time to embed lasting change into a corporate culture.”
3 Comments to Most mentoring programs fail. They don’t have to.
I agree with tha 2-3 year embedding period and a structured, leadership “blessed” and supportive process goes a long way to delivering ROI.
I have observed two very successful Global corporation progams applying mentoring as one means to address their “Crew Change” dilemna. As the “Baby Boom” generation retires, it’s creating a big demographic shift (or Crew Change) in a number of industries. These programs are still alive and well even after some “downsizings”/”right-sizing”/”whatever-sizings” over the past 10 years.
Could one of the keys to their successful mentoring is that they have implemented it as part of their succession and/or workforce planning ? A clear business driver with a win for both the mentor and mentee as well as the corporation.
Dave I agree with your comments.
It is evident that if mentoring as a program is left to the individuals, will fail sooner rather than later.
In the end, Mentoring works with astounding results if it is seen as an Enterprise wide program and is supported and funded correctly (PS: it is not a huge inpost on the financial side, the example being that the Mentoring program we run at one organisation is the only one to have survived recent cutbacks in HR initiatives).
Organisations that consider mentoring as an ongoing development process (for both the mentee and mentor) tend to have higher retention of their staff, better morale and culture survey responses etc. There is empiracle proof of that.
You raise two great points.
1. Sponsorship from the top. If HR believes that they are the ones who have to lead and drive this program it will struggle as soon as Leadership is not seeing quick enough results and they will struggle to get budget. Only if there is sponsorship and engagement from the top will the program have cut through and sustain through the start up phase.
2. it takes 2-3 years for the ROI to materialize. When a highly experienced management team joins a business the share price often goes up because of the expectation that this management team will be able to deliver greater results in the future. It will take a period of time though until they achieve that uplift. The market prices this uplift in early. In your own business when you have a coaching/mentoring program it takes time to transfer the skills. The employee engagement uplift plus the capability uplift that can be achieved by a mentoring program will lift all the commercial metrics over a period of time. But the uplift is not as instantaneous as it would be on the stock market. However it is sustainable.
I think it is also important to emphasise that we need to work with the client in the beginning on defining the expectations in regards to the ROI of a mentoring program, I always find that when our client is clear on what ROI is possible they push through any resistance at the 6-9 months mark and get the uplift in 2-3 years time.
Post a Comment