Shortly after Zainab Sisay was assigned her first billable project at Technology & Business Integrators (TBI) of Woodcliff Lake, NJ, she began having serious reservations about her team's methodology. After studying the client's requirements more closely, the 27-year-old Sisay decided that it was time to share her opinion with the team's other members, most of whom were about 15 years her senior.
It was at that moment her courage left her. Instead, Sisay, the youngest consultant at the firm, went to her mentor, Marianne Bays, a TBI senior practice manager.
"I said, 'It sounds right to me, and don't back down from it. It's not only the right thing to do for the project, but the right thing to do for the company,'" says Bays.
Her confidence fortified, Sisay followed Bays' advice; the project manager listened to her concerns, changed the team's approach, and subsequently pleased the client. Sisay's story is as much her own as it is TBI's: No longer just a menu item for eager recruits, TBI and other firms now view mentoring as a means to transform their organizations and cultures.
In the case of TBI, mentoring promises to be the solution to an escalating cultural problem — a workforce composed largely of experienced hires, but very few recent graduates. With more of TBI's consultants reaching retirement age, the firm realized that its intellectual capital was slipping out the door. By offering a recent grad a mentor, TBI had the means both to lure new talent and to keep its intellectual capital in-house.
TBI is not alone. A variety of firms are now leveraging mentoring programs to transform themselves. For instance:
• Clarkston-Potomac depends on mentoring programs to integrate employees, who work largely out of virtual offices, into the culture.
• Ernst & Young is seeking to grow the number of woman partners, by opening mentoring networks that previously had excluded women.
• PricewaterhouseCoopers uses mentoring to help retain minorities and women on the partner track.
"It's important for young MBAs to have mentors who pave the way and help guide them in the workplace," says Sisay, who left her previous job with a financial services company for a number of reasons, including the lack of a mentoring program.
"In 35 years, we have never had any MBA-level hires," says Bays. "We have always had very senior level consultants who could hit the ground running. We need to hire entry-level management consultants in order to build the resources we need for the future."
Port of entry to the top
In the case of the larger firms — PwC, E&Y, and Deloitte Consulting — the resources they are most trying to hold on to are women and minorities. Since men dominate the upper ranks of the large consultancies, some women and minorities say they feel shut out of the established informal networking circles.
"It's very natural for men to network with men," says Denny Marcel, associate director of the Office for Retention at E&Y, where the 2,179 female consultants make up 32 percent of the total consulting population. "This may result in a perception among some women that they don't have the same opportunity as men."
E&Y is piloting one-on-one mentoring for female managers and senior managers with a male partner, and group mentoring for women below the manager level. While the women get access to top officials at the company, the male partners say they are sensitized to the challenges faced by the women. "Our intent is to use this program to shift our culture. Over time, we want everyone to have a mentoring relationship," Marcel says. "But, we feel that the first step is to create a level playing field for women so that they have access to career development opportunities."
A second initiative is designed to accelerate the movement of 25 high-potential female partners into more senior leadership positions. The women are matched with a member of the management committee, and are put through a 360-degree performance feedback process to work on a development plan.
While a 39-year-old participant in the program says that she doesn't believe that women have had fewer opportunities than men in the firm, she acknowledges that she has benefited from having this additional support.
"My career has definitely progressed in the past year," says the partner, who has been with E&Y 14 years and requested anonymity. In the last year, she says, she has been given the responsibility of leading a large team. "Would this have happened without the program? Potentially, but I think that this program has given me an awareness about senior leadership and gives me the views of the management committee on different issues."
As part of its employer-of-choice strategy, PwC recently rolled out two initiatives-based legacy programs from its pre-merger firms. The first provides one-on-one mentoring for 400 high-performing women and minorities until they make partner. The other, "Networking Circles," which is in its pilot stage, links women across service lines in certain geographic areas.
"We have women managers across all service lines meet over lunch or a breakfast meeting," says Joanne O'Brien, the director of human resource development at PricewaterhouseCoopers. "They are self-directed circles. The overall goal is to build a support network to help them navigate their professional or personal lives."
It's April, have you seen your coachee?
Using a mentoring approach sometimes favored by small and mid-sized firms, Clarkston-Potomac, based in Durham, NC, and Sibson, based in Princeton, NJ, assign mentors to everybody — including support staff. Both have committees, made up of employees in the recruiting department, who play matchmaker. Sibson also ties the performance of the mentor with employee appraisals.
Partners at Clarkston-Potomac saw the need for a mentoring program in 1997, as they watched their small firm, with its virtual environment, expand. They now have 200 consultants, up from 72 in April 1997.
"We were a growing organization, and we were going to need a tool for networking, for communication, and for the assimilation of new employees in the company," says Scott Daggerhart, the firm's human resources administrator.
Participation for both mentorees and mentor is voluntary, but very strongly encouraged. All mentors, called coaches at Clarkston, receive a tool kit, once-a-year training, and monthly reminder e-mails from Daggerhart asking them, "Have you talked to your coachee lately?"
Fadi Hindi, a senior project manager with Clarkston-Potomac, says he believes that mentoring programs lose their value when they are forced on employees.
"We need to make this program available to folks who want it, and not push it on everyone. Some people are not ready to be coached, and some people are just not interested," he says. Hindi previously worked at Andersen Consulting, where the mentoring program was launched with much fanfare, but then did not work out as well as it could have. "One reason it didn't work at Andersen was that we were trying too hard to make it work. Maybe we tried to force it, and it didn't work well. The right approach is to let it ride. On the flip side, the coach has the responsibility to keep in contact with his or her coachees."
Employees say they are grateful. "There are a lot of times when I need a person outside a project or practice area to give me nonbiased advice," says Denise Vu, a senior consultant at Clarkston-Potomac, based in Indianapolis. She says that her coach, who is in Florida, is "very good at managing my expectations."
As consultants move into project management roles, she believes they should take on coachees, too. "It helps them understand the frustrations that younger folks have when they go onto a project," Vu says. "After three or four years, you don't see the frustration anymore."
Not everyone can become a coach at Clarkston. Coaches are invited to participate, says Hindi. "It's not a chore. It's not something that's just given to you. It's something that you have to earn. Not everyone, I believe, has the capability or the desire to be a coach."
George Stalk Jr.
Senior vice president at Boston Consulting Group:
The most significant mentor in my life has been James Abegglen [the retired vice president of Boston Consulting Group, and his coauthor on Kaisha, the Japanese Corporation]. Jim changed my life. I hadn't written a book until I met him and I hadn't taken significant intellectual risk until I met Jim. He and I were in Tokyo for five years [to study Japan's manufacturing process]. He called on a lot of friends at Hitachi and Mitsubishi, and got me face time with people in the Japanese companies to talk about manufacturing and speed. [When we met], I was a business strategist, and Jim opened my eyes to the politics in business, the policies of business, and the importance of writing. I wasn't much of a writer, but Jim is, and he encouraged me. [Editor's note: Stalk has authored five books.]
Jim Champy
Chairman of Perot Systems' consulting practice:
I had two mentors, and still do: Tony Athos and Peter Drucker.
Tony had been the head of the Behavior and Organization Section of the Harvard Business School. I learned a lot from him about the behavior of people and organizations, and the importance of people in getting anything worthwhile done. Tony also taught me to trust my own intuition, but at the same time to have empathy for what people were going through. He is one of the best behaviorists in the business — now retired.
Drucker taught me pragmatism and the importance of stating things simply and directly. Consultants often get too caught up in their own ideas. Drucker taught me to look around. He also conveys a great sense of history, and taught me the importance of precedence — in other words, that most problems are not new. I felt that it was a great privilege to have both Tony and Peter as advisors.
Orit Gadiesh
Chairman, Bain & Co.:
My earliest recollection of a mentor is that of David Ben-Gurion. He was the first prime minister of Israel and happened to be the grandfather of a classmate. As children, we would often play at his house. I distinctly remember how Mr. Ben-Gurion would take time to talk to us and engage in a current topic of conversation or ask our opinion about a book we might be reading or quote a poem. He would challenge us to think and articulate a reaction, so we learned to state a point of view. He had a truly unassuming manner and a wonderful way with people: He was patient and accessible, yet tough and precise. Even as a child, I could sense his powerful presence of character and dignity. I could watch people's reactions to him out of respect, not fear.
One of his most memorable characteristics was his ability to listen attentively — a quality that was unique in the environment where I grew up. It left a lasting and meaningful impression on me at the time, and continues to guide me to date. In essence, all these traits, so clearly anchored in my early impressions, combined later on in my life to exemplify the qualities of a great leader, which he really was.
Stephen Sprinkle
Managing director, service lines, at Deloitte Consulting:
I consider Dr. Shelly Harrison, a high school teacher, my mentor. I had him as a science teacher, and later he was a physics professor at the university I attended. I also worked for him as a research associate. Dr. Harrison taught me how to think analytically and objectively, and he taught me to be open to learning from multiple disciplines. He also taught me to be willing to make personal sacrifices to make a difference.
In his own life, Dr. Harrison took a "step down" for a while to become a high school teacher, even though he already had his Ph.D. He chose this path because he believed that high schools, in an attempt to have "socially relevant" curriculums, had de-emphasized science and mathematics. Finally, he was persistently interested in individual students, and led me to do more than I thought I was capable of.
Mel Bergstein
Chairman and CEO of Diamond Technology Partners:
I had a very clear mentorship. During my formative years in consulting, my mentor was Reg Jones [Reginald L. Jones, a former managing partner with Arthur Andersen who headed the firm's New York office]. I worked for him for many years, and we are still friends. He was always there, always ready to spend time to encourage me, always kind. I looked to him when I was confused about things. He got me over the rough spots and guided me through a number of career decisions. Reg was the guy who actually shepherded me through to a partnership. And then he helped me in my early years as a partner to get established. When he retired, we still kept in touch, but of course, it wasn't quite the same. When he left, there was a big hole in my career.
He taught me resilience. He taught me that the key to the art of life is getting up — that is, learning from mistakes and continuing to keep at it 'til you succeed. He was very patient, and always took his own career issues in stride. He preached patience, resilience, and a positive attitude. He always had a positive attitude, and he encouraged people to always have a positive attitude, which I always thought was really the right way to manage. In addition, he was very family-oriented and very good at balancing family and work. He did a great job at work, but also had five kids and was a great father. He showed that it could be done — that you could achieve all those things.
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