Mentoring - A Gift

I’ve been privileged to have had great mentors in my time at Bell Labs, AT&T and out on my own. These people have shaped my life--not only giving me guidance, but also showing me what it means to mentor.

In 2009, I started participating in Brown University's Women's Launchpad Program (WLP), pairing women alumni in business with senior students for career, grad school and other post-grad planning. My mentees have been mechanical engineering majors.

Our love of Brown gave us an immediate common ground and we quickly found others. Both young women have a passion for designing--which is really a passion for solving problems, for improving, for creating.

What did mentoring entail? Guidance on choices, pros/cons, looking at options, proper ‘business' protocol. But the most important thing I felt was to teach these women to learn to network. That is, how to find people, to reach out, to get exposure to as many ideas, types of people and interests as possible.

While the young women keep thanking me, I am the one who is richly blessed. It is an honor to know them, to be a small part of their future real, to see what wonderful things this next generation can--and will--do.

They are more mature, thoughtful and passionate than I was when I was their age! It is easy to become optimistic the future of our nation and world when you see what these ‘kids’ are capable of and committed to doing. While the WLP program is “for” the students, the greatest benefit is to us alumni, allowing us to help this great generation as they innovate the future for all of us.

So, go find someone to mentor:  in your company, your division, your alma mater, wherever...the rewards are priceless and enduring!

Invent, but Don't Innovate?

When I was at Bell Labs, my job was to invent and create, dream up solutions to problems that did and did not exist.  Some of these problems we thought up ourselves, others were ‘given’ to us by AT&T corporate product management and marketing.

For the most part, though, we didn’t get to see problems firsthand--as in, real live customers. At that time, corporate didn’t understand the need for us to see, hear and learn through people. We worked only with empirical data.

This led to a tense relationship between our two organizations – a lack of trust on our part and corporate’s frustration with our constant questions.  The result? Products and services designed more for us than for real customers.

Not a good thing.  There was a clear gap between invention and innovation.

Eventually, for one exciting, highly competitive project, I was able to visit a real live customer – and what a difference that made!  How did this happen? The product manager and I were friends.

It all started with a trusting relationship, at a very fundamental level. It was that simple.  And the project resulted in a patent and a very profitable service for AT&T.

Where are the disconnects in your organization? How can you leverage existing relationships between people in difference functions and areas to increase communication, knowledge flows and learning?

Please share your thoughts and experiences!

Innovation's 2 New Letters: HR

We’re all finally recognizing that management and innovation are social activities – people activities. So it has struck me as rather odd that HR is hardly mentioned in the conversation. Why?

Perhaps it’s because corporate management and HR have a 20th century mindset towards HR. What we need is a 21st century mentality, especially given the increasingly social aspect of “work” and the talents of our Gen-X/Y/Z colleagues.

So go figure when a 160+-year-old company in a very 20th-C industry uses HR in a very 21st-C way. Well, that’s Menasha Packaging – yup, packaging – old, boring, brown box stuff. Actually no, really cool, innovative and sustainable retail packaging.

How did this happen? The GM of Menasha’s biggest complex, Mike Riegsecker, simply didn’t know better. He didn’t know that using his HR director, Sharon Swatscheno, was unusual or radical.

Given Sharon’s talents and knowledge of the organization, it simply made sense to have her facilitate the innovation sessions and manage the process. Why not? This also made it easier to include innovation metrics and tactics into his team’s personal performance plans.

In all honesty, much of the success isn’t the title/role of HR. It’s Sharon – see, people once again! Sharon didn’t view her role as tactical, but strategic, and so did Mike. Because of Sharon’s knowledge of the organization, she was able to create highly effective cross functional/disciplinary teams as well as provide the necessary training and tools.

Her role helped people overcome their fears of innovation – looking stupid, making mistakes, failing, peer pressure, losing control, etc.

What can you do to use your HR people more strategically? What can you try?