[E10.3] Organizing a Mentor Program
A Hub and Spoke framework to scale a validated model to mentor opportunity youth
Dear Reader,
For this Post in Product | Strategy | Innovation I will explore how to organize a Mentor Program within a controlled “Hub” to verify key assumptions. This allows the Program to scale across a network of “Spokes” to validate the model. This is the 3rd Part of a 3-Part series focused on opportunity youth. In the 1st Part, I provided the background story on opportunity youth. In the 2nd Part, I covered my experience mentoring a young man and a prospective Mentor Program Model.
In this 3rd Part, I will cover how to organize a Mentor Program to verify key assumptions with a cohort of young adults who are each paired with an experienced business leader as a mentor. The next step is to design an alpha deployment that would match cohorts of opportunity youth with experienced business leaders. This would make cohorts of about 6-10 individuals to form 3-5 mentor/mentee pairs.
The sections in this Post cover:
Alpha deployment(s) to verify key assumptions
Hub and Spoke framework to build and scale Mentor Program
Beta deployments to validate model to scale
The Mentor Program should be open-source so anyone or any organization can use and contribute to the materials used at no cost. An Academic partner can advance the research to support the initiative and Corporate Sponsors can help fund that work. And early adopters can help verify key assumptions and build early evidence. I see 4 key stakeholder organization profiles to help provide adequate structure:
Academic partner - an organization to drive research questions and to serve as Hub to centralize the model and best practice, e.g. Harvard Business School
Mentors - an organization with experienced business leaders that can also provide governance over a Mentor Program in a specific Spoke, i.e. city or region, to decentralize the distribution of mentors, e.g. HBS Association of Boston co-located in the Hub as the initial Spoke
Mentees - an organization that trains opportunity youth as a source of mentees in a specific Spoke, e.g. Year Up Boston
Corporate Sponsor - an organization that places opportunity youth into internships and full-time roles that do not require a 4-year college degree, e.g. Boston offices for JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Amazon, etc.
1. Alpha deployment(s) to verify key assumptions
An Alpha deployment is an opportunity to de-risk key assumptions on a small scale with early adopters. Eliminating or reducing at least 1 leading risk for failure and verifying 2-3 key assumptions for success can improve success in later stages. Alpha deployments also challenge the model and standard operating procedures (SOPs) in their initial form to iterate for the next deployment(s). Alpha deployments limit the scale to test these key assumptions, but can also repeat on a similar scale to further refine the model and procedures.
Alpha deployments may include more than 1 cohort to A/B test any key assumptions, but the scale is on the order of 10s with less than 100 active end-users to reduce complexity. Cohorts should also be small with 6-10 individuals to facilitate discussions in case a cohort meets as a part of the Program. Some key assumptions to test & iterate around organizing a Mentor Program with early adopters include:
2-3 key assumptions to position Mentor Program with opportunity youth Mentee candidates.
Mentee navigates Internship at Corporate Sponsor with an experienced business lead vs. going it alone
Mentee develops Playbook to drive Internship success
Mentee develops Learning Plan to meet their key objectives
3-4 key assumptions to position Mentor Program with experienced business leader Mentor candidates.
Measured impact(s) on opportunity youth entering the workforce
Defined time requirement and expected role with an opportunity youth
Mentor Program Playbook to use with Mentee
Research objectives and plan with Academic partner
2-3 key assumptions to position Mentor Program with Corporate Sponsor
Role of experienced business leader Mentor and measured impact on opportunity youth entering the workforce through a Sponsor internship
What is in scope and out of scope for Mentor Program
Research objectives and plan with Academic partner
3-4 Research Questions for Academic partner
What are the key predictors for internship success?
What are the key needs for the Corporate Sponsors?
What are the key needs for the internship mentees?
What motivates Mentors to sustain participation in the Program?
Another opportunity with Alpha deployments is to start exploring key model requirements at the limit of scaled deployments.
How many mentees are active participants at the limit of scale to help inform requirements?
How long does a Mentor/Mentee pairing last? What is the expected commitment, e.g. 6 months, 1 year, 3 years?
What are the target cities at the limit of scale?
What are the target organizations to reach that scale?
What would enable scaling qualified mentors to match the number of mentees?
What will sustain and scale adoption with Corporate Sponsors?
Do any costs or processes benefit as unit volumes scale?
What infrastructure and governance are required to reach and sustain that scale?
The Alpha deployment phase is done once key procedures and documents are updated and verified with actual use. Key assumptions to test with expansion require a scale beyond the Alpha deployment. This also helps determine the need to wrap up the Alpha deployment phase.
2. Hub and Spoke framework to build and scale Mentor Program
Boston provides a core market to build and verify key assumptions for a Mentor Program using a centralized Hub. Harvard Business School, the HBS Association of Boston, Year Up, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Amazon and other organizations have headquarters or regional offices in the Greater Boston area. New York City is also relatively close to expand once there is a need to verify learnings in another market. Boston alone as the Hub or Boston with an initial expansion to New York City are more than adequate to exhaust key needs for Alpha deployment(s).
The initial Alpha deployment also provides evidence with early adoption of the model. This facilitates recruiting other stakeholders in the Hub and building out more of the components like the research objectives. Spokes radiate the model outside the Hub to other cities. This makes the Mentor Program more impactful for key stakeholders and attracts more stakeholder organizations. But it is important to expand in stages to help control complexity with growth.
3. Beta deployment(s) to validate model to scale
Beta deployments scale the number of Mentor/Mentee cohorts in the Hub and activate other cities to further validate the model across 3-7 markets. This likely means expanding to more Corporate Sponsors in the target cities, so any onboarding of the Program with new organizations will need to be verified. The target cities likely align with the cities where the source of opportunity youth mentees, e.g. Year Up, has a strong presence.
Serial Beta deployments can also start with adding cities within the existing sources for Mentors and Mentees, but may need to add more Corporate Sponsors to scale the number of supported internships in each city. Next, new sources of mentees, e.g. General Catalyst, may be needed to support scale, but will need to participate with the same Corporate Sponsors. That means some components are the same, but there will be more variation in the core training for the mentees. But this also supports the need for research to determine any differences in outcomes based on different inputs like the source organizations for opportunity youth mentees.
With scale within these 3-7 target cities, new sources for Mentors, e.g. Wharton School alumni, may also be needed. But there should be no constraints to limit the number of opportunity youth who need a Mentor for Corporate Sponsored internships. Another variable would be opportunity youth entering the trades through an organization like Youth Build. An open question is are there similar needs from a Mentor for this new source of mentees or does the mentor need to have substantial experience in the trades. In this case, the Mentor Model could be shared with other participating organizations to expand the impact on opportunity youth pursuing different career paths.
At some point these initial 3-7 target cities will approach a limit of how many opportunity youth can participate and the next source of growth is to scale to more cities. If this happens incrementally from maybe 3 to 5 and eventually 7 cities then that is just expansion within the Beta deployment framework to validate more assumptions, procedures and components of the model. Once deployments radiate with a larger step up to more than 7 target cities, this drives the need to scope Charlie deployments to advance the staged approach until all key assumptions of the Mentor Model have been adequately validated to just scale towards the limit of deployments.
The evidence generated by the Research partner eventually drives adoption with a continuously expanding network of participating organizations to meet the needs of a larger pool of the estimated 5 million opportunity youth in the U.S. alone for an estimated 12 million unfilled Corporate jobs.
At some point within the Beta deployment phase, due to the number of mentees who have transitioned into full-time work with the Sponsoring Corporations, the priorities may evolve for the Mentor Program. Instead of just expanding the number of active mentees to improve their chances of converting into full-time work, the pool of mentees with a mentor will be looking to advance their careers within their Sponsoring Corporation or wherever they may go next. Should they pursue a 2-year of 4-year college degree while working or complete additional skill-based training? How do they prepare for their first promotion? That means the scope of the Mentor Program and Research partner will need to evolve to meet the growing needs of the mentees.
Conclusion
In this 3-part Series, we have explored opportunity youth, their needs for mentors, a Mentor Program to tackle these needs and how to organize such a program for scale. While writing this Series, I have talked to more young adults who entered the workforce without a 4-year college degree through a Corporate internship that transitioned into full-time work. They emphasized how critical mentors have been to their success. That includes peer mentors who were further along in their career, but were recently in a similar role, managers within their company, and leaders within the training program they completed. But all agreed a structured Mentor Program that matched them with an experienced business leader outside of the Corporate Sponsor would add significant value.
One young man in particular entered JP Morgan Chase as an intern through Year Up just over 7 years ago without a 4-year college degree. Since then, he converted his internship into a full-time role at the company. This led to a promotion as an Analyst after 4 years at the company including the internship. He was then promoted into an HR role to support growth of an emerging talent program to scale more opportunity youth entering and converting into full-time jobs at JP Morgan Chase. He recently moved to Washington D.C. for yet another promotion to sell treasury bonds for the U.S. Government at JP Morgan Chase. Along the way, this young man also completed a 4-year college degree and stays very involved with Year Up as an alumnus of their program.
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.