RUN WITH THE Big dogS™ newsletter
Volume 3, issue 37

Mentoring can be a tool for communicating senior management's vision...John

Management idea

We were reviewing the success of the strategic goal to communicate the company's vision.  The challenge was that one of the key areas of the company had a culture that resisted any change in the status quo.  The direct supervisors, a product of this culture, hadn't made much of a dent in communicating the need for change.

The team came up with the idea of creating a mentoring relationship between a senior manager and a line employee.  Their existing mentoring arrangement was skill based.  They would team a new employee with another skilled individual - one who also, unfortunately, taught this status quo culture.  The new approach of having senior managers mentor changed the paradigm to one where the mentor's primary role was to communicate the new culture.  With this change they saw progress at long last.