I hear it every day! We need mentoring in our organization. Let’s implement a mentoring program. I usually find the hair standing up on the back of my neck when I hear that statement. You probably wonder why – after all that is my core business! It is all about the culture – and if the culture won’t support mentoring then a mentor program is being set up to fail. We can add another one to the list of many failed attempts.

Let’s look at the path that most companies take. Someone has an entrepreneurial idea that they begin to incubate and a new company is born. The company begins to grow and with the growth they become more successful. With success a new batch of challenges need to be addressed. If these challenges are not addressed then chaos attacks the company and the once entrepreneurial idea complete with the spirit that sparked it begins to diminish. We struggle with finding the answer to why the culture that we once had diminished and our organization is no longer a positive place to work. We are experiencing high turnover rates and it seems that it is always the good employees that are leaving. We hopefully see the business impact that this is having – lost productivity, unhappy customers, and high amounts of sick leave and added stress to all that are immersed in this environment. So we decide that the solution is to all of this is to implement policies and procedures – or in more common terms, more bureaucracy. Is there another solution?

If we implemented a mentoring culture – where we worked with our employees and managers to create an engaged, empowered and accountable work force we would eliminate the primary need for so much bureaucracy. Let’s face it the cycle is not pretty – we implement bureaucracy to deal with a few employees who probably shouldn’t be in the organization any longer (wrong person – wrong position). The more bureaucracy we have forces the good employees out the door as we have stifled their creativity and engagement leaving us with more of the wrong people which require more bureaucracy to address the incompetence and lack of discipline or engagement. The cycle goes on. Even more frustrating is that new employees coming into our organization either conform to the negative behaviour or leave after a brief exposure to the toxicity in the work place.

The best way to stop the vicious cycle is to take the first step and begin to introduce mentoring into your organization. But wait; let’s first make sure that your culture will support a mentoring program. We need to stabilize your culture and then we can begin the journey of creating an engaged, empowered and accountable work force, a work force enabled by a mentoring culture. Our journey will help us determine if we have the “right people in the right positions on the bus “minimizing the amount of bureaucracy that we need to have in place.

The time for talking is over! You need to begin to look at where your organization is today. Look inside and see the turmoil that is already building. You do have time to stop the cycle that can consume your organization. Are you up for the challenge? If you are, then embrace the “power of mentoring” and begin the exciting and rewarding journey today!

References:

1. Good to Great – Jim Collins