In a twist on an old practice, the Globe has an article in it today about Bottom-to-top Mentoring. The idea behind reverse mentoring is for junior mentors to help senior leaders get a better idea of newer issues and technologies. Reverse mentoring on such issues as social media, diversity, and understanding younger employees will enable senior leaders to get a better handle on up and coming trends. Interesting spin on how to teach an old dog new tricks.
If you’ve ever wondered why large companies are so slow to react and small one are so nimble, listen to Derek Fisher as he explains his Convoy Theory.
http://vimeo.com/35375972
It seems there is a general problem out there, both in identifying up and coming leaders and in training them. An article in today’s Globe states that ” We found that few organizations have a clear handle on the qualities they are looking for, and even fewer can claim that those qualities can be accurately measured. In short, they don’t know if they’re choosing the right people to train as leaders – or whether that training succeeds.”
If you think about it for a second, this is a serious problem. If we found that we spent a lot of money selecting high-potential doctors and then training them and that after all that selection and training we weren’t sure if we had good doctors or whether they were well trained we would sure be concerned. And yet the business world continues to over promote and under train. It may come down to expectations in that somehow, while people expect that you need training in medicine to be a good doctor, they think that you don’t need training in business or leadership to be a good manager.
I attended a trade show last week that was part of the Canadian Society of Training and Development (CSTD) conference. Very interesting as it had been a couple of years since I had last been there. The thing that surprised me most was how little the trade show had changed since I had last been there. It seemed as if the same firms were presenting the same things that they had been talking about a few years ago. Given the changes that are being tried in education and the rapid increase in digital media, I was expecting to see a great deal of innovation. I guess like in many industries, innovation is occurring at the fringes, at companies that are not yet part of this mainstream activity. I would love to meet firms that are trying new approaches, that are innovating in management education so if you come across any, please let me know.
I think pencils are much like socks. You know the old problem of the dryer eating your socks. I think the dryer might also be eating my mechanical pencils. I just can’t figure out where they’re all going. I know I have about 10 of them but today I wasn’t able to find even one. The thing is, they seem to disappear one by one, only to reappear a while later one by one. So I’ll start with 10 on my desk and a few days later I’ll have none. Then lo and behold they start coming back and ending up on my desk. Where have they been? Were they on vacation or in the dryer? I try to be so organized about everything else, I can’t understand why I’m so disorganized about my pencils. If anyone knows of any good management techniques for dealing with errant pencils please let me know as I’ll build a whole training module on the subject. After all, I can’t be the only one having this problem.