1.
Strategic
Mentoring
How to Build the Fabled
Connected Company
& Engage Ever-changing
Markets

2.
2| 2015
The Author
Stéphanie MITRANO, PhD
Since 2001 in London, Stéphanie has been supporting
and consulting for senior executives in multinational
groups, as well as startups. As a Transition Designer she
helps foresee and deploy the strategic transformation
of their business and teams.
She is a certified Executive Coach and holds one of
the rare Management Sciences PhD on “Mentoring
Entrepreneurs” in Europe. In 2007, she focused her work
on designing and implementing mentoring programmes
for large multinationals in banking, energy, IT systems,
online retail, strategic consulting, and defense and
aerospace.
At that time, she also founded the consulting
agency Merkapt, with her partner Philippe MÉDA to
complement her soft skills approach, with Philippe’s
business experience in innovation and business models.

3.
3| 2015
Foreword
You might have thought that mentoring was just
one of those HR trendy tools to attract and retain talents
and to remotivate senior managers in your firm.
Well, think again.
This white paper as been designed to give you an
opportunity to reconsider what you may know, or imagine,
about mentoring. Mentoring is not a new practice.
It has spread in large corporations and multinational
companies from country to country for the past few
decades, and has become one way for HR executives
to stimulate cross-generation relationships in order
to maintain the company’s knowledge, expertise, culture
and competences.
Lately, I believe that it has been essentially translated
in “How do we deal with millennials ?”.
Even more recently, this practice has spread to
intrapreneurship (“How do we not get disrupted today,
by what was a 3-people startup last week?”) and to gender
equality (“How do we help women change our dying
business culture?”).
Although I am very happy that this practice is spreading
for it carries strong values of solidarity and sharing,
in most cases it results in a “nice-to-have” communication
/ PR tool.
As far as we are concerned, we believe that if you spend
resources to establish a mentoring programme in your
company, it would only be fair that you get money back
on your investment.
To do so, probably requires that you learn something
about what mentoring really is.
This white paper is about just that.
In it, we will discuss and try to illustrate how corporations
can find a balance between their formal structure source
of efficiency and their informal networks source of agility,
and why mentor / mentee networks are such powerful
cultural game changers.
It all starts on the next page.

4.
4| 2015
•01Mentoring
is Strategy
It all started relatively slowly in the 70s,
bloomed in the 90s, then again at the start
of the new millennium, and appears to be
again the new thing to do. Every 15 to 20
years, we are confronted with the need to
renew a generation of employees all across
a company organisational chart, adapting
more or less painfully to a mutated
generation identified by a single letter:
X, Y, and now Z.
Since then, formal mentoring programmes
in large firms, have been seen as one
of the HR’s best practice tools.
Mentoring is an “off-line help
by one person to another in making
significant transitions in knowledge,
work or thinking” (David Clutterbuck,
1999). It is a medium to long term
voluntary relationship between an
experienced person (mentor) and
someone less experienced (mentee)
who is willing to benefit from it.

5.
5| 2015
•01Mentoring is Strategy
As a reach-out program, socialising new
arrivals in a company’s culture by creating
a personal bond with a senior employee,
is quite an obvious and smart thing to do.
And, once started such programmes also
lead to nice, prolonged pay-offs, like
helping mentees in their career
development, or helping the company
retain talents (depending on your
perspective).
Now let’s be clear, this is all nice and
interesting, but this is not a key matter.
If your company deters high potentials
and bleeds talents, it’s probably not
because your HR are sub-optimal in
fast-tracking high potentials, or that your
juniors’
on-boarding programme is not fun enough.
Most of the time, it’s because your
company is clueless about how the market
is evolving. And it shows.
Of course, wherever you are on the planet,
the local on-going economic crisis is not
helping, the digitalisation of your
ecosystem (or lack off) leaves you open
to aggressive new entrants that do not
seem to even speak your language, and
even the simple notion of being an
employee seems utterly outdated with new
recruits aiming at being “intrapreneurs”.
The Innovator’s dilemma principle
explains that successful companies
put too much emphasis on the
current market needs that make
them a success. They try to
reinforce the current “magic recipe”
as best as possible, build a culture
around it, and eventually get blind
sided on new opportunities that
will meet their customers’ unstated
or future needs. Christensen calls
the anticipation of future needs
“disruptive innovation”.
If your company deters
high potentials and bleeds
talents {...} it’s because
your company is clueless
about how the market
is evolving. And it shows.
Whether you are in B2B or B2C, what
you should perceive by now is that what
disconnects you from your market is
essentially a cultural gap. At this point,
you may want to re-read Clayton
Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma.
If you now want to go back at the
ontogenic promise of a mentoring
programme, you’ll realise its true potential.
Because it is built to bridge individuals with
different cultures together inside the same
business. It is designed to be an active
strategic tool helping your company move
forward through the ongoing market
disruptions.
In this white paper, we’ll help you
understand how to design a mentoring
programme that sustains your business
strategy, and then eventually how
to cascade it with an HR perspective.
Now that we better understand the role
and versatility of mentoring programmes,
let’s identify the key dimensions that you
can leverage to serve your strategy.

6.
6| 2015
Think of these dimensions as building blocks, that will help you connect your
business to the HR perspective, and foster positive change throughout the
company:
Key
Dimension
Business Strategy HR Management
Organisation Mentee Mentor
1. Horizon
Spreading strategic and long term
vision throughout the company.
Recalibrating priorities
in an extended timeframe.
Gaining perspective beyond
own objectives and towards global
succession planning.
2. Speed
Accelerating adaptations to the market,
solving problems quicker and
propagating best practices.
Accelerating complex
learning often developed
through trial and error.
Regenerating knowledge and
learning new uses, perspectives
and technologies.
3. Height
Opening of perspectives allowing
for more creativity, innovation,
and benefits from diversity.
Taking a step back to gain
a wider perspective on
career, problems and
business opportunities.
Opening to new issues faced by
new generation in management,
business and industry whilst
capitalising on and transferring
best practices.
4. Space
Fostering knowledge and best practice
sourcing, as well as solidarity and more
widespread support.
Engaging more resources
with extended formal,
or informal networks.
Being recognised in own network
and facilitating informal
relationships within and outside
the company.
5. Resilience
Trusting and supporting relationships
acting as a safety wnet during troubled
times.
Limiting dispersion and
favouring emotional and
psychological stability.
Feeling like a valuable contributor
to the sustainability of the
company.
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•01Mentoring is Strategy

7.
7| 2015
•02Mentoring
at Work
Understanding that the organisation can
benefit from mentoring is one thing but
actually seeing the connection between
the tool and the outcome can be trickier.
So let me make it clearer by illustrating
three typical strategic turnaround using
the five key dimensions of mentoring.
The three examples we’re going to
present are pretty much standard for
any corporation: fostering women parity,
rekindling creativity and innovation,
or facilitating international growth.
Another strategic scenario that we could
have addressed is quite the elephant
in the room: enabling your digital
transformation.
We’re not going there.
Not because you couldn’t put mentoring
to work on this one (quite the contrary),
but because there is no typical case in
regard to digital transformation.
Each business is really in a very specific
position, not only because of their
internal affinity with digital, but also
because of the affinity of their market,
the relative ease of monetising digital
in their ecosystem, and the pressure of
competition. This is really a case by case
approach; or it would deserve its own
complete white paper.
oui !
yes !

8.
8| 2015
•02Mentoring at Work
2.1 • Fostering
Women Parity
With many changes in regulations and
society, companies are waking up and
starting to implement all sorts of initiatives,
networks and programmes to support
women’s careers.
The questions that arise are numerous.
Is it just to follow legal obligation or are
they really aware of the need and willing
to have more women in top executive
positions? Do they want to work on their
image as employer or is there a real
understanding of the culture changes that
may need to happen in their organisation?
In various industries, the issue of women
is not the same. The history and culture
of the company have an impact on women’s
careers. Many variables may be considered
to understand how women’s careers, equity
and diversity are connected to strategy.
So before jumping into the “let’s have
a women’s network with a mentoring
programme” discussion, we need to
understand the issue.
Is it about women’s assertiveness? Dated
management practices? Rigidity of the
corporate structure? Sheer lack of women
in the sector?
If the top management wants to achieve
results with women, we’re usually facing
three short-term objectives:
1. Get more women at the top to enrich
strategic perspectives and competencies,
without building the kind of positive career
discrimination that will antagonise male
managers;
2. Build trust with the actual high number
of talented women for these positions in
your company or in your industry, that up
to now were not used to reaching the top
of the career ladder, and still don’t want
to play politics;
3. Ease senior employees in adapting from
prevalent masculine style of management,
to a more balanced one.

9.
9| 2015
For the mentoring programme, this could be translated as:
Key Dimension
Business Strategy HR Management
Organization Mentee Mentor
1. Horizon
Spreading strategic and long term vision
throughout the company.
Get more women
at the top
Shadowing sessions:
“One Day in the Life
of a Senior Exec”.
Internal female mentors
as role models sharing
about company politics.
2. Speed
Accelerating adaptations to the market, solving
problems quicker and propagating best practices.
Workshops and training on
assertiveness, business and
other “Being Board-Ready”
skills.
External female mentors
as role models sharing
about posture and skills.
3. Height
Opening of perspectives allowing for more
creativity, innovation, and benefits from diversity.
Ease senior
employees
Increasing visibility
with events presenting
mentees’ transversal
projects, added-value,
contribution or realisations.
Senior Executives and
mentors involving women
mentees in cross-business
units projects.
4. Space
Fostering knowledge and best practice sourcing,
as well as solidarity and more widespread support.
Build trust
Energising mentee
community, with monthly
networking with VIPs
and sharing experience
objectives.
Male mentors
sponsoring women
internally.
5. Resilience
Trusting and supporting relationships acting
as a safety net during troubled times.
Peer mentoring, and
reference point with
coordination team.
Engaging mentors (men
and women) with strong
relational skills.
Again, this is only an example. Nonetheless it should help you better understand
the difference between a “nice to have HR people stuff” tool, and one that can truly
support your strategy.
•02Mentoring at Work

10.
10| 2015
2.2 • Rekindling
Innovation
Intrapreneurship
Avoiding being “uberised”, innovating like
start-ups in large rigid structures, helping
employees regain creativity, exploring new
business models… are the issues we see
our clients confronted by everyday.
To foster innovation in large corporations,
several keys and “difficult to get”
ingredients need to be gathered: creativity,
market awareness and risk mindset whilst
being reassuring to existing customers with
a solid efficient structure.
Getting this combination of ingredients
not only requires being great at what you
are doing but also having employees with
the capacity to adapt their thinking and
mindset in line with society. With the
evolution of demographics, people’s needs
and technologies, corporations need to
embrace hybridisation and be willing to
open to new markets, to be aware
of unexpected competitors and realise that
what was true decades ago about markets
is no longer valid.
It is the confrontation to the outside --
often unrelated -- world, that can stimulate
the ideation process. Innovation emerges
out of confrontation with the unexpected.
This is why so many creativity techniques
are based upon divergence and shifted
perspectives.
Innovation emerges
out of confrontation
with the unexpected.
To generate this necessary open-
mindedness, a solid mentoring programme
will usually rely on two key tools linked to
the dimensions 3. HEIGHT and 4. SPACE:
• A closed internal network for mentees
in key strategic activities, with mentors
at key positions in different parts of the
organisational chart (linking manufacturing
and marketing for example);
• An open external network with
successful entrepreneurs as mentors,
preferably not in the same market of the
company.
•02Mentoring at Work

11.
11| 2015
And within these two networks of mentors,
the cultural mix will have to be adjusted
with great care. Consider in that regard,
the dimension 2. HORIZON of the
programme, and make sure that depending
on your industry, market need and current
culture, you create an adequate mix of:
• Generations: allowing mentors to learn
about new generations’ issues, new trends
in usage and technologies and mentees
to learn about organisational culture
and best practices;
• Cultures: be it geographical, ethnic
or organisational;
• Activities: cross-departments, cross-
functions, and cross-markets.
You need to realise that by nature
innovation will appear in unexpected ways,
which is the point of building such cultural
mixes. Recently, examples of surprising
pay-offs that we had while setting up
mentoring programmes were:
1. Cross-corporations mentoring with
mentees from an IT company developing
mobile software for customers in
payment systems, that stimulated
mentors in the automotive industry
to prototype new dashboard apps.
2. Mentoring between the extremities
of a medical value chain, that generated
direct benefits for the patient by
enhancing up-the-chain employees’
understanding of surgeons’ needs and
behaviours, and widening down-the-chain
employees’ perspectives on potential
product externalities while used in an
operation room.
3. Mentoring between similar activities
in different countries for a retail
multinational, that allowed for more
inspiration and insights into future
businesses in Europe, based on recent
Japan trends in mobile social networks.
4. Intrapreneurs from a corporation in
defence systems, paired up as mentees
with experienced entrepreneurs,
developing several new prototypes
in three months, down from one year.
With mentors and mentees gaining
confidence in playing with new ideas,
exchanging with less formality and more
diversity, you’ll alleviate the constant
pressure of managers to justify everything
as a sound business decision.
And that’s good: if you can fully back up
every idea with a business plan, they’re
not going to be very disruptive, and you’ve
been thinking about them for probably
too long.
Rapidly, you’ll also see that you are
building on 1. SPEED and 5. RESILIENCE
at corporate level.
This last example on intrapreneurship is
by the way, a much more secure approach
to the fabled “new businesses incubator”
initiative that has popped in many
multinationals these last years. Instead
of trying to pool new ideas from your
employees through internal contests,
selecting half-a-dozen a year, and trying
to nurture them in a special room with
post-its, bean bags and 3D printers… build
a mentoring network, it works wonders.
{...} if you can fully
back up every idea with
a business plan,
they’re not going to
be very disruptive {...}
•02Mentoring at Work

12.
12| 2015
2.3 • Accelerating
international
growth
With the globalisation of markets, it has
become essential for organisations to
internationalise, to adapt business models
to different cultures and to identify
opportunities beyond their usual territories,
beyond their comfort zone.
The key issue for most would-be
international businesses is their lack
of insights on cultural subtleties. Their
approach is pretty much straightforward
on a first run: “We proved it worked in
Germany, let’s take it to UK, … or Taiwan”.
On a second run, they usually over-
compensate and try way too hard to project
their business model in the new culture:
“If we have to sell the product in China,
let’s do what Apple is doing… plate it with
gold”.
Going global calls for a deep understanding
of cultures which cannot be learnt in books,
or deviated from market studies.
Many western corporations that try to get
a foot in any consumer market in Asia,
are for instance quickly stone-walled by
their low context culture in a high-context
culture. And if you don’t know what it
means, reading Edward T. Hall on the
subject will help, but won’t give concrete
solutions.
Solutions to international
expansion, always start
with cultural embedding.
•02Mentoring at Work
Guten
tag
€
Salam
aleikoum
؋
Nihao
$
Hello

13.
13| 2015
Solutions to international expansion,
always start with cultural embedding.
Granted that there is a huge difference
between a national company that wants
to create a subsidiary abroad, and a
sprawling multinational that wants to
rebuild a “glocal” culture, however the key
is identical. It is direct contact and
inter-cultural exchanges that can truly help
people develop not only knowledge, but
integrated understanding of foreign
markets.
Other things being equal, a strategic
internationalisation will very often be
efficiently sparked by a strategic cross-
cultural mentoring programme.
Obviously here, the key dimension at play
is 3. HEIGHT, to be able to build up new
perspective from above your usual business
logic. But, at play there is also 2. SPEED to
make sure that the organisation doesn’t lag
in its adaptation to changing realities from
geographical zone A to B. In that regard,
the HR management cross-cultural
mentorship is not highly complex.
It is highly specific.
Let’s see how it would support key
moments of an internationalisation project:
One year before launch…
A specialised consulting team maps local
market drivers and strategic opportunities.
HR study the various employment laws,
local employees’ expectations and needs.
Legal and Finance work on currency
hedging, local contracts jurisprudence, etc.
Local managers from other
(non-competing) companies start
to mentor key executives.
Eight months before launch…
Local offices are scouted and rented. A mix
of marketing, and RD people get
embedded in the new local market to
prototype new offers in one-week
hackathons. Newly hired local sales people
get training in the corporation business
processes.
A group of junior local talents
is recruited in sales and marketing,
and as mentors to every team manager
involved in the international project.
Three months before launch…
Production and communication are at full
activity for the new market. First early
adopters are targeted and get previews
of the product. An internal extension
to the customer relationship management
system is used to compile local best
practices in the new market (how to treat
customers’ concerns, negotiating prices
in a different culture, how to speak
of the brand that is yet to be known, etc).
The CRM system is also used as an
internal social network connecting
sales people to mentors that have been
active around the project for months,
and that provide guidance and specific
recommendations on top of the
documented best practices.
•02Mentoring at Work

14.
14| 2015
Sixth months after launch…
Errors have been made and corrected,
production, sales and supply chain are up
and running. Local suppliers have been
selected and start to deliver. HR start to
scale up local recruitments for next year’s
campaign.
As an on-boarding process, new local
recruits are immediately paired to a
senior mentor in their business unit,
to adapt to the group’s business
culture, and to accelerate their business
readiness. But also, headquarter’s
managers in supply-chain and
purchasing, are mixed with local
equivalents from key suppliers
in a mentoring programme focused on
quality.
This story is adapted from one of our
customers’ international deployment.
Don’t consider it as a best practice per se.
It only demonstrates in a specific way how
mentoring facilitates, compliments and
strengthens a given internationalisation
strategy. But mainly, it emphasises how
to avoid an “us” versus “them” atmosphere,
where the company would play defence,
close on itself, and try to format new
talents to the exact headquarters’ way
of working and thinking.
Cross-cultural mentoring brings ways
to learn from foreign markets, that will
propagate throughout the whole
organisation.
Mentoring being a medium to long term
relationship, encourages exchanges at
human level including gaining a deeper
understanding of someone’s culture and
accelerating the cross cultural learning,
far more than a book or a training.
A mentor can share knowledge about legal
system and its workings, subtleties of
language, business codes as well as the
subtleties of human interactions in various
contexts, behaviours to avoid and all these
related to real-life experience.
Cross-cultural mentoring
brings ways to learn from
foreign markets, that will
propagate throughout the
whole organisation.

15.
15| 2015
•03Designing
a Programme
To design and deploy a mentoring
programme that will positively spread
throughout your organisation, and deliver
strategic alignment, you should be guided
by three key principles.
To make it as simple as possible, consider
these principles as a baking recipe:

16.
16| 2015
3.1. Open
the recipe book
The first step is about designing your
programme around a clear strategic
alignment.
As we have seen in previous sections,
there is no “one-size-fits-all” mentoring
programme. So to make it work, you need
first to be clear on your strategy and how
mentoring can support it. The design of the
programme needs to reflect the strategy:
so if you want to stimulate innovation
internally you may choose a cross-BUs
programme or external mentors to support
an existing intrapreneurship programme.
We have observed many programmes that
just paired up mentors and mentees in the
organisation without thinking about the
reasons why and the coherence with the
company strategy. These programmes can
have some benefits for employees as
mentoring is an interesting and stimulating
relationship, but the overall impact for the
company is marginal.
Also, employees need to be clear on why
they engage in a mentoring programme.
So giving and sharing meaning is key, as you
want to attract motivated participants
on a free and voluntary basis. The outcome
of mentoring resides on the quality of the
relationships, the mentors and mentees’
engagement in a medium to long term
relationship, their willingness to benefit
from it and invest these benefits back into
the organisation.
When the mission of the mentoring
programme is not clear or the coherence
between mentoring and strategy is not well
explained, the cake falls apart very quickly.
A lack of engagement of the top
management will lead to skepticism and
mistrust, the programme will be built on
low engagement, a reduced pool of
mentors, and eventually unwilling mentees.
To avoid this systematic pitfall, your
“cooking” check-list is as follows.
Opening the recipe book to make
mentoring work means:
• Design the programme’s values and scope
with a direct link to the specific strategy
that has to be sustained, and formulate
a synthetic business plan around the
programme with quarterly key objectives
on your company’s business;
• Identify the operational elements: size of
target population (to start with), matching
process, duration of programme, support
team, training, guidelines and tools,
communities management, etc;
• Formally engage key people from senior
management, Executive Committee (and
Human Resources) to sponsor the
programme;
• Communicate openly at all levels on how
mentoring supports the current strategy;
• Create an internal platform for reference,
FAQs, storytelling and testimonies, and
update it relentlessly (at least on a weekly
basis).
{...} design the
programme’s values and
scope with a direct link to
the specific strategy that
has to be sustained {...}
•03Designing a Programme

17.
17| 2015
These steps are a very fair acid test for your
programme.
If they seem overly ambitious and
disproportionate for a mentoring
programme, it’s probably that you are not
fully committed to have a real impact on
your company’s future, or that your top
management isn’t.
3.2. Mix People
After its preparation, the core part
of the programme has to be delivered.
In our experience, the success of a
mentoring relationship is essentially about
the interpersonal fit, not the technical skills,
or extent of the past experience of the
participants (which you shouldn’t discard
for obvious reasons).
Whatever your constraints are at this step
in terms of budget, geographical situation,
or even language barrier if you are a
multinational company, creating conditions
so people can find a match easily is key.
The ways to enable the matching of
mentors with mentees are numerous
and have to be chosen in line with overall
strategy and culture of the organisation.
We’ll further explore this step in the next
chapter.
Let’s say for now, that there are two
practical options:
• Mentoring pairs can be manually matched
by a coordination team according to their
profiles and needs, or even automatically
matched by an algorithm giving a
percentage of fit;
• They also can be autonomous in the
pairing based on online profiles and
networking events.
Most programme managers usually start
with the former option, if only to explain
to their hierarchy that there is a method
at work. But actually, when they try both
options, they are surprised, that just giving
people opportunities to find and discover
each other within a very diverse pool
of participants works just fine.
Whatever the way people find each other,
what is important is that they have some
level of choice, the possibility to change
partner or have several mentors or
mentees, that they discover other areas
of the business, that they feel comfortable
enough to open up and share, that they
do not feel pressured by the organisation,
so that the relationship can grow at its
own pace and in its own way. The aim is to
cultivate solid and enjoyable relationships
that will create an informal network
overlapping and strengthening
the organisational structure.
The success of a mentoring
relationship is essentially
about the interpersonal fit,
not the technical skills,
or extent of the past
experience of the
participants.
•03Designing a Programme

18.
18| 2015
3.3. Bake Communities
To transition a strategic plan to an
imbedded informal network culture, time
and nurturing are required. Aside from a
raised level of satisfaction for participants,
there is no quick win for the organisation.
Now, of course there’s no reason not to
enjoy employee’s satisfaction; many
companies have critical struggles on this
part alone.
Still, if you keep in mind that the real prize
is in the medium to long-run, you have
to be prepared.
The best programmes start with a
coordination team who will act as reference
point, set the rules, engage participants,
implement internal communication,
coordinate activities with experts, detect
dysfunctions, feedback to the organisation,
and energise the whole initiative over time.
Mentoring experts can support the
programme in the design, train mentors,
mentees and coordination teams, share
tools, experience and best practices,
support mentors in their new posture,
stimulate mentees to fully benefit from
the relationship and help the team to
evaluate and improve the programme.
Even with the shortest programmes
spanning over 6 to 8 months (dealing with
a small-scale spin-off or acquisition for
example) it is essential to re-energise
relationships once in a while.
The best programmes
start with a coordination
team {...}
A good cocktail of tools to support your
programme could be:
• A mentors’ club, so they can share their
best practices, support each other in their
new posture, and be reminded of the
rules, do’s and dont’s (this is actually
critical if mentors are not from your
company);
• A simple but fully active corporate social
platform to share experience, testimonies,
questions and tools;
• Mentoring events to network, gather
communities around specific themes
(connected to mentoring or not), to
refocus their practice, and learn new tools.
As we said, building a community that will
transform your culture from within takes
time.
But it doesn’t require five or ten years.
Starting with a pilot programme and then
deploying the practice throughout the
whole organisation is not only perfectly
viable, but usually the best way to build
trust and engage your board in a two to
three years plan.
Reaching a first critical mass may happen
in several steps, starting with a few
business teams, in one or two business
units, and then growing to many more…
It can be achieved by geographical zones;
or virally with no structural restrictions but
with organically increasing willingness of
employees. The greater the scale, the less
formal the programme will be and the more
it will tend to be another normal practice
within the organisation.
As with all strategic changes in a company,
managing to achieve short-term results as
fast as possible produces a very important
positive spin. So a pilot programme can
allow the teams to ease themselves in this
change, see its potential, and sustain the
deployment of the practice in the long run.
It is the start of a mentoring culture.
{...} managing to achieve
short-term results as fast
as possible produces a very
important positive spin.
•03Designing a Programme

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•04The Art
of the Start
To kick-start a cultural change, we usually
aim at involving about 30% of the
organisation in one or two years of time.
As we already suggested, to obtain such
critical mass, it’s very efficient to start with
a pilot programme in order to bring some
people in the practice, to see the first
results, to adjust the formula if needs be;
and then, to more formally ramp up the
project.
So whatever your strategic goal is,
and the way you will formulate your
mentoring programme, the art of the start
is critical. And, it may seem intimidating,
but actually you will pretty much end up
with only 3 starting scenarios.
We call them “The Ancient Pyramid”,
“The Silo Factory”, and “The Techno
Network”.

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Depending on which one is closer to your
company case (and keep in mind that you
may be in a mixed situation), here are the
ways to start it all:
4.1. The Ancient
Pyramid
This scenario is the case of the large
patriarchal structure that was a great
success ten to fifteen years ago and is now
stuck in rigid management and processes:
• The organisational chart is vast, extremely
rigid, and above a certain level of seniority
women are nowhere to be seen;
• Political games are paramount, and
short-cutting your N+1 is at the same time
extremely frowned upon and an open
sport;
• People know that they are a cog in a huge
machine and don’t see, or believe, that
they have any impact on anything;
• Everyone is talking about innovation
and intrapreneurship in meetings, many
consultants are hired every year on these
topics… and then everyone goes back to
business as usual.
Such a company is the poster child of the
innovator’s dilemma: everything is frozen
in the hope of maintaining a long past
success. People don’t even think anymore,
they just try to reproduce how things were
done in the crazy hope that it will work again.
What we learned is that at the end of
the day, if the mentoring programme is
not knowingly bought by the CEO, and
the executive committee as a strategic
action, you will fail. Of course, some senior
managers will get on board no matter what,
but quite rapidly the programme will
be sabotaged by political game plays.
If the CEO and the board green light
the programme for what it is, they will be
demanding proofs of efficiency, but they
will also accept the need for a systemic
change. This is OK. This is where you need
to start.
Launching the programme, will then
require to immediately target a transversal
side of the pyramid with at least 3
hierarchical levels. Your immediate goal
is to mix different levels of the pyramid,
as well as various functions, and introduce
external perspectives in, as quickly and
deeply as possible.
Demonstrate that you can open the
perspectives, let go of old models without
killing the core business, and you win. Even
if it is a symbolic victory, without direct
consequence on the bottom line of the
company (yet).
More than in any mentoring programme,
the choice of mentors will be critical.
And actually, the optional, but also very
best practice, would be to open the
programme to external mentors. This may
seem impossible in such setup, but you’d be
surprised on how easy it actually is!
•04The art of the Start

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4.2. The Silo Factory
If your corporate world doesn’t look like
a pyramid, the second most encountered
option looks like a collection of business
units connected together by matrix charts.
Such companies are usually younger than
“Pyramids”, but they have seen many CEOs
coming and going every 3-5 years several
times over. Each management round
bringing different strategic intents and
visions, and adding them together layer
by layer.
“Silos” corporations are also typically born,
or grown, out of external accumulation
of subsidiaries via mergers and acquisitions.
When “Pyramids” are dying from a culture
that is obsolete and that they try to
maintain no matter what, “Silos” are dying
by lack of any shared culture. The only
culture that exists is within each department
or subsidiary. Each one of them tries to
achieve as much autonomy as possible
within their perimeter; insulating
themselves from the changes that
periodically strike the whole corporation.
Starting a mentoring programme in that
case should also start with the CEO or the
board’s full sponsorship. But it’s optional.
Since the CEO is probably on its way to
another company in less than 18 months,
launching the programme by on-boarding
two high profile VPs reigning on different
activities can be much more efficient.
In that case, you should try to be
opportunistic and leverage a roadblock
faced by two such departments lacking
internal coherence, preventing their
accelerated growth. Good VPs are by
nature very political; excellent VPs know
when they need to relinquish some power
and work together.
Find them, talk to them at the same time
with very open goals, and explain how you
can contribute to rebuilding synergy in the
internal value chain by implementing a
cross-department mentoring programme.
Mentees will gain a wider knowledge of the
organisation which can encourage mobility,
and mentors will network with their peers
in other businesses. The informal
communities created will benefit the
business by breaking down the silos and
encouraging transversal communication.
In this scenario, achieve a small success with
two such key business units, and you will
rapidly spread the programme to the whole
company.
•04The art of the Start

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4.3. The Techno
Network
The last archetypal case we are usually
helping out achieve cultural change is a
much younger and nimble company with
solid technological assets that helped them
achieve explosive growth within the last
10 years, or so:
• The organisational chart is rather flat,
mutual history and informal connections
within the company are key;
• Political games are low, leaders work easily
together, but alliances are temporary and
essentially based on short-term objectives;
• People are well aware of their value
and aim at negotiating their skills at every
opportunity, within or outside of the
company;
• Everyone is talking about innovation,
but the focus is on inventing technologies,
not really bringing transformative
products to the market.
For such technology-oriented organisations,
distance working, mobility, and digital
connections of employees are mainstream.
The trade-off is that such a techno-sphere
lacks human contact, becomes disconnected
from its employees, customers and the
markets.
As for Nokia, their downfall can be a matter
of only a few years, still maintaining top
technological skills, but without business
focus or acumen.
In such companies, the inception of a
mentoring programme is usually met
in a friendly way. It probably has been
done many times already, and one of
them is surely running in the background.
But it is still an “HR thing”. As a soft skill
programme, employees won’t value it as a
critical priority. If the tools involved won’t
be too problematic for the employees,
the real problem is that they never had any
impact in the past.
In that case our experience dictates again
to be opportunistic. Since, teams in a
“Network” company are highly project
oriented, find a struggling project that
is failing by a blatant lack of shared goals.
Such projects shouldn’t involve long-
term technical components, but revolve
more around sales or marketing team
interactions with RD.
The emphasis will be put on human
contacts, listening skills and informal
communities. In that case again, relying
on external mentors -- ideally with strong
entrepreneurial experience would bring
tremendous results. And, because the
communication channels and networks
are already present and strong, the practice
will be able to flow naturally and spread
throughout.
•04The art of the Start

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The “necessary-for-survival” agility culture
is often observed in companies in the form
of ad-hoc networks, lean methods,
entrepreneurship initiatives. When
spreading throughout a company,
mentoring can integrate the culture and
become a powerful agility tool. Indeed it
opens up minds to different cultures
(national or industrial), markets and
functions; encourages knowledge and best
practices sharing; and knits informal but
strong connections between employees.
The propagation of mentoring relationships
hence creates informal agile networks
-- key to innovation and internationalisation.
As an example exposed in this paper,
a cross-functional mentoring programme
allows for sustainable informal networks
to build between various sectors and
professions in the company which in turn
allow a faster emergence and activation
of innovative projects than in an isolated
RD cell.
The first step towards a mentoring
culture is usually a formal mentoring pilot
programme which may start in a few
number of ways depending on the context:
a section of the pyramid, a pilot across
several business units, or the
re-humanisation of a techno-sphere.
Whatever the context there are 3 main
rules to follow to ensure a successful
launch: strategic alignment, relationship
alchemy and viral propagation.
Whether you already have a “nice to have”
mentoring programme, or are thinking
about it, or are being hassled by employees
and HR to implement one, then I hope this
paper will have enlightened you a little
not only on why but also how it could be
a powerful tool for your organisation and
its strategic transformation.
•05A Final
Perspective
The propagation of
mentoring relationships
hence creates informal
agile networks - key to
innovation and
internationalisation.

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Contact Us
Merkapt is a consulting and training agency that copilots
the innovation process of startups, incubators and blue
chip companies.
The rules seem simple enough: while startups need to
focus less on technology, and more on their potential
markets; large corporations need to become agile again
and learn from early-stage, risk-taking ventures.
In the context of disrupted ecosystems and fast-growing
markets, we guide you in innovating your business
to outsmart competition, and in developing new legs
for increased nimbleness.
We call that business and transition design.
If by any mean you need an answer to any question,
we’ll be glad to get in touch.
Stéphanie MITRANO
smitrano@merkapt.com

25.
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