[E10.2] AmentorZ: Mentor Program Model & Playbook
Opportunity Youth in various stages of development need Mentors and Role Models
Dear Reader,
Yes, Elon Musk made an offer to buy Twitter this week for over $40 billion, but that is not the focus today. For this Post in Product | Strategy | Innovation I will continue a 3-Part Series related to opportunity youth. This group represents the 5 million young adults in the U.S. between ages 16 to 24 years old who are disconnected from school and work. 12 million jobs requiring postsecondary education will go unfilled over the next decade. A divide exists between these opportunity youth and those opportunities to thrive. Organizations are working to secure more opportunities for these young adults, but many more are behind them in earlier stages of development. And those who enter corporate internships and full-time jobs need strategies to dream big and thrive with ongoing career advancement.
Walid
I have mentored a young man for about 2.5 years. I will refer to him here with his permission as Walid. We met through Year Up where Walid was a student at the time. Our first meeting was at a Business & Community Leadership Dinner hosted by the Harvard Business School (HBS) Association of Boston in the fall of 2019. This event was attended by HBS alumni and other Boston-area leaders.
And at this event, we also hosted tables for Sponsor companies like Anthem Innovation, Fidelity, IBM and Merrill, Entrepreneurs from start-up ventures and Youth from 2 local community colleges and Year Up. After the dinner, a leader from the Year Up Boston executive team introduced me to Walid who they had invited to join them at our Youth table. Walid and I talked briefly and I gave him my contact details to call me if he wanted to meet and talk more about the event he attended, Year Up or his career options. I left it to Walid to take an action. He did and we met in-person again, but this time for coffee near the Year Up Boston location.
Walid and I discussed what I do in my career as a consultant and Walid’s goals with Year Up and beyond. It was very clear Walid was motivated to rise above his current challenges. He just needed a coach. This was before the pandemic, but I said I could commit to meeting every 2 weeks for 30 minutes if we could do so using Zoom or Google Meet to eliminate any travel requirements. This would allow us to check-in regularly, provide updates on our progress and discuss any challenges we might be encountering in our projects.
Walid and I have met regularly every 2 weeks for the last 2.5 years with only a few exceptions using Google Meet. Walid completed a 6-month internship at a major bank through his Year Up program that resulted in graduation on schedule. And this period also included the onset of the pandemic, but the internship led to an offer for full-time employment at the same major bank on a technology team. This job led to taking on more responsibilities with opportunities to take on more project leadership roles and strategic projects around process automation with global teams.
Walid is establishing himself as a thought leader within the bank on process automation using the latest tools and best practices. Walid has developed the skills needed to win over and over again. Walid has also started a 2-year Associate Degree program to obtain a college degree. These 2-year programs can also be used later to fulfill the college credit requirements to expedite finishing a 4-year Bachelors Degree program. I’m sure this will be a topic Walid and I will discuss more in the future.
Walid’s Story
Walid was born in Casablanca, Morocco in a low-income neighborhood known for crime and danger to those who live there. His family did not have a lot of money, both his parents worked very hard and moved the family frequently. Walid excelled in school as a child and was enrolled in “gifted” programs in elementary school where he thrived. Role models were not a part of Walid’s life as a child. He looked up to his father and his work ethic, but they did not discuss Walid’s future and career goals.
Walid moved to the United States with his family to pursue more opportunities. He grew up in the Greater Boston area in Malden & Everett, Massachusetts. Walid started getting into trouble with over 12 suspensions in middle school and high school. He says he was almost kicked out of high school. But Walid was also on the honor roll in high school. He started working when he was 14 years old.
Walid was accepted to most of the colleges he applied to with about $200,000 in scholarships combined from different schools. Walid was the runner up for a full scholarship to a university in New Hampshire, but eventually was concerned about taking on college debt without a full scholarship. He pursued a community college in Boston while working, but eventually dropped out with a lack of motivation for that environment. Walid started working on his skills in photography with a studio and demonstrated exceptional ability. He moved to New York City to pursue college again and maybe pursue photography/acting there.
Walid moved back to Boston after 2 years in New York City. He heard about Year Up and enrolled in their program. He excelled at Year Up and was offered an internship with J.P. Morgan. After completing Year Up’s 6-month internship sponsored by J.P. Morgan, Walid was offered a full-time job at J.P. Morgan in the same group where he completed the internship. Walid has received multiple raises and is working on a promotion into a role with more substantial management responsibilities.
Walid has lived up to his potential as an opportunity youth navigating the opportunity divide. I have only played a minor role with encouragement and building the confidence to swing for the fence when you get a good pitch. But Walid is really just demonstrating the ability he displayed as a young child. He was destined for greatness. He just needed a program like Year Up and an organization like J.P. Morgan to rise above his challenges.
Mentor Program Model
I’m taking my mentoring experience with Walid and my own experience in corporate America to develop a simple Mentor Program Model and Playbook. This will help me continue to mentor with adequate structure and provide a model that can also be refined and replicated by others to use. I will explore options to eventually maintain this as an open-source document for anyone or any organization to use once more key assumptions are validated.
I also think it is important to look at opportunity youth as a “Product” hired with a Job-to-be-Done and Product Requirements. With this in mind, mentors need to have a good idea of the Product Requirements by working with a partner organization to help iterate and develop the Product over time. Mentor / Mentee pairs working in parallel can also leverage concepts from business accelerators and bootcamps that gain efficiencies with a cohort of ventures going through a process together versus serially. But the Mentor Model for now focuses on the tools a mentee needs to accelerate their career development with the support and feedback of a mentor.
Mentor/Mentee Check-In Meetings
Schedule a recurring 30-minute Meeting every 2 weeks at the same time
Leverage Zoom, Google Meet, MS Teams with video and in case screen share is needed
Keep informal, but agree on a recurring Agenda for structure and consistency
2 min - Mentee: key progress, what’s next, challenges
2 min - Mentor: key progress, what’s next, challenges
1 min - buffer
10 min - Mentee: 1-on-1 meeting
OR
Annual Review with Manager10 min - Mentee: Objectives & Key Results (Annual / Quarterly)
OR
Learning Plan OR yield to Mentor to discuss their own projects if needed for context or a proxy5 min - Mentor: Summarizes call & feedback
Lunch / Dinner once a year
Opportunity to check-in on value provided and how to improve
Discuss more than work
Opportunity to include significant others
Working documents maintained by Mentee to facilitate Career Development
Annual Review - Committed and Stretch Annual Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) to begin fiscal year with Employer
OKRs - Progress with quarterly Key Results to track progress against Annual Objectives & Key Results
1-on-1 Meetings - Strategy and Plan to lead recurring meetings with Mentee’s Manager
Org Chart - mapping out key decision makers and leaders
Learning Plan - Working document with prioritized skill development
Career path assumptions
Stretch goals for job assignments
Projects
Company or third-party training
College courses
College degrees
Certifications
Playbook
The Playbook leverages the various tools mentioned above for the Mentee to build and maintain their game plan. This starts with 3 different time horizons to define career and personal objectives over 10 years (long-term), 3 years (mid-term) and 1 year (short-term). These will evolve over time, but it is good to think beyond the current year to at least contemplate mid-term and long-term goals. The Personal Mission Statement provides a focus on values and what matters most to the Mentee. The 1-year Strategy uses the tools in the Mentor Program to focus on tactics for the current or upcoming year.
The Playbook should be a working document that is developed and actively maintained by the Mentee. It should also be personalized to the individual. For some this might be a 3-4 page document, but others might go into more details with a 20-page document. It should reflect what works for the individual.
Peer mentoring is an opportunity to expand the support an individual receives from mentorship within the organization where they work. This ensures that advice from an external mentor is complemented with advice that is more specific to the culture and norms of the organization. Peers could be experienced leaders within the same function to help guide skills development and stretch goals. Or Peers could be in a different function to broaden the scope of advice received. Many organizations have existing peer programs to leverage.
But Peers can also be other opportunity youth working within the organization and beyond. Networking, learning and sharing with this group benefits all opportunity youth in proportion to the effort made to do so. Year Up encourages active alumni networks within organizations where Year Up alumni work and externally with a Year Up National Alumni Association. Year Up and its alumni network hold an annual Year Up Alumni Summit and maintains an active Year Up Alumni Board.
Vision: 10-year, 3-year and 1-year Career & Personal Objectives
Personal Mission Statement
1-Year Strategy:
Design where Mentor(s) can help the most
Design OKRs with a focus on Advantages and Scope
Design 1-on-1 meeting plan with Manager
Design action plan for Org Chart
Design prioritized Learning Plan
Peer Mentoring
Seek experienced leader inside the organization
Network with other opportunity youth inside the organization
Network with opportunity youth outside the organization
Conclusion
An open question is will a structured Mentor Program Model lead to better outcomes. The expectation is an experienced business leader paired with an opportunity youth who is either entering a corporate internship or full-time job will accelerate the career path and success of the young adult over 3 years and beyond. This seems to be a valid research topic HBS could investigate as the academic partner for the OneTen project. Participants who qualify would just need a structured program with standardized tools with ongoing feedback from the Mentor, Mentee and Employer to assess unpaired vs. paired opportunity youth with an experienced Mentor.
And another open question is whether an Employer would hire more opportunity youth if they knew they were paired with an experienced business leader who would mentor them through an internship and full-time employment if that develops over a 3-year period. Mentoring could continue with the same or different Mentor after 3 years, but the expectation is to make a 3-year commitment to see through some of the mid-term career and personal objectives established in the Playbook. Organizations like business school alumni from HBS, Wharton, GSB, Kellogg and Sloane plus employees at McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG and EY could organize a Mentor Program focused on pairing their experienced business leaders with Opportunity Youth within client corporations. Sponsorships could include OneTen, Year Up and other organizations to access opportunity youth.
In the next Post of this 3-Part Series, I will share the structure developed in 2017 at the HBS Association of Boston serving over 8,000 HBS alumni and other business leaders in the Greater Boston area. The Leadership Pillar is where a Mentor Program would align for opportunity youth, but mentoring could expand to entrepreneurship and social enterprises, too, through the other Pillars of this organization. The structure of a parent organization (HBS) to centralize strategy, models, alliances and research and a global network (HBS alumni clubs) to decentralize the pairing of Mentors and Mentees where they live and work makes such an initiative scalable.
Best,
Stephen
I’m long opportunity youth and the organizations mentioned in this update. Nothing in this post is intended to serve as financial advice. Do your own research.