Category Archives: Mentoring & Other Business

Next week, I am in a new full-time class for Sun Directors and
Vice Presidents. The class is called “Leadership Connections” and it requires
a great deal of preparation. In early July, everyone scheduled for next week’s
session was sent an email from Sun’s CEO and President,
Jonathan Schwarz:

“Sun’s people are our biggest competitive advantage. And it’s your leadership of our global teams, both the people you select and the decisions you make, that are at the heart of Sun’s next generation.

You’ve probably heard me talk about courage – the single most important attribute for a leader at Sun. Leaders have to demonstrate the courage to innovate, to act with integrity, to collaborate, and act with pace and urgency. I trust you to make those decisions on behalf of our business.

We invest for the long-run when it comes to talent. Leadership development is a marathon, not a sprint – that’s why we recently announced the new Sun Leadership Academy.

So I’d like to invite you to participate in our Leadership Connections…”

Since that email, I have taken the three required style, personality, and effectiveness
evaluations (including a “360” for which I invited thirty of my peers, customers, bosses,
and coworkers to provide specific feedback), and had a coaching session with an
organizational psychologist. Today, I am trying to finish two web-based pre-training
business classes. I plan to review all of the materials again over the weekend.

I have heard from other executives that this new class is very good and
worth the time. I am curious and looking forward to it. More news when I
have some…

Registrations for SEED’s

Annual Event at the end of September are coming in briskly. We have 74
program participants, managers, and mentors signed up to attend in-person
so far. There will be many joining us remotely as well. The dinner and
one of the tours are already sold out. The two SEED Showcase moderators are
working with the six presenters on their introductions. We are looking
forward to a fun event!

More information on the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program
is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/

The SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program is holding its annual in-person
event at the end of next month. SEED offers monthly phone-in meetings and a
1-day meeting each Spring but the Autumn SEED Event is much bigger.
It is the formal term-start for two groups of mentees and mentors to begin
their time together (the 2008-2009 Recent Hires and Established Staff groups).

This year, we are offering two days of speakers, tours, a
Sun Spot
demo, a hosted dinner, plus many opportunities for SEED participants, their
managers and mentors to get to know each other and Sun’s executives better. Confirmed speakers include:

• 
  Dr. Greg Papadopoulos,
  Chief Technology Officer and
  Executive Vice President of Research and Development –
  SEED’s executive sponsor!
• 
  Mike Lehman,
  Chief Financial Officer and EVP of Corporate Resources
• 
  Aisling MacRunnels,
  Vice President of Software Marketing
• 
  Dr. Ron Ho,
  Distinguished Engineer, VLSI Research Project, Sun Labs
• 
  Dean Nelson,
  Senior Director, Global Lab & Datacenter Design Services

In addition to these remarkable executive speakers, the event includes
two sessions of the SEED Showcase during which we can show off to each
other. There will be six SEED speakers (three each day) giving short
presentations on their current work. Tanya Jankot and I picked the six
speakers from among 28 applicants. Yesterday, I gave away 11 travel scholarships
to the Showcase presenters plus others so that Sun Engineering staff who have
not seen our Menlo Park headquarters can visit during the SEED event. Between
the scholarships and the 43 registrations (so far), we have people joining
the SEED Event from China, Czech Replublic, India, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand,
UK, and the USA. We usually have over 100 participants, some calling in but
the great majority in person.

More information on the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program
is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/

Since 9 July, we have been in the SEED 2008-2009 Mentor Matching Cycle.
That is, the 84 Engineering mentoring program Participants (Mentees)
have created and prioritized their 15-name Mentor Wish Lists and I am
in the process of sequentially contacting
the highest priority potentially available mentor for each of them.
In this first 20 days (just short of 3 weeks), 74 or 88% have been matched so
far. There are two terms being matched at the same time:

• September 2008 – September 2009 Recent Hire Term
  
  which already has 21 out of 23 matched
• September 2008 – March 2009 Established Staff Term
  
  which already has 53 out of 61 matched

This matching cycle is slightly ahead of where we expect it to be. Last year, we
took the average of four term matching cycles over their first three weeks. Not all
SEED terms have the same number of participants and some offer special challenges
(like having all participants working outside of the US). Nonetheless, here is
a comparison of that 2007 average against the current 2008-2009 term:

More information on the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program
is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/

Since 9 July, we have been in the SEED 2008-2009 Mentor Matching Cycle.
That is, the 84 Engineering mentoring program Participants (Mentees)
have created and prioritized their 15-name Mentor Wish Lists and I am
in the process of sequentially contacting
the highest priority potentially available mentor for each of them.
In this first 15 days, 67 or 80% have been matched so far.
There are two terms being matched at the same time:

• September 2008 – September 2009 Recent Hire Term
  
  which already has 20 out of 23 matched
• September 2008 – March 2009 Established Staff Term
  
  which already has 47 out of 63 matched

We have a parallel project in the works this summer, using the services
of Alice, my second-term High School Summer Intern. Alice
is creating simple profile SunWeb pages for Sun executives (Fellows,
Distinguished Engineers, Principal Engineers, Vice Presidents, Directors…)
and all SEED potential mentors who do not yet have profile pages.
Many executives get profile web pages created automatically, like
those on Sun’s
Executive Bios web page. However, not all of us are exalted enough
to rate such a high-visibility page. Sun Labs solves this problem with its
People at Sun Labs/CTO
web page. Staff in our division are offered an easy tool to create both
internal and external web pages. However, not everyone is in CTO or
Labs. Alice has the fun job of creating SunWeb pages for over 120 accomplished
SEED mentors who did not get one some other way. About 250 SEED mentors already
had web pages (some of them created by Alice last summer). Internal web pages
are extremely useful to Sun Engineering staff all over the world who are
seeking expertise or help.

More information on the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program
is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/

Since 9 July, we are in the SEED 2008-2009 Mentor Matching Cycle.
That is, the 85 Engineering mentoring program Participants (Mentees)
have created and prioritized their 15-name Mentor Wish Lists and I am
in the process of sequentially contacting
the highest priority potentially available mentor for each of them.
In this first ten days, 50 or 59% have been matched so far.
There are two terms being matched at the same time:

• September 2008 – September 2009 Recent Hire Term
  
  which already has 16 out of 23 matched
• September 2008 – March 2009 Established Staff Term
  
  which already has 34 out of 63 matched

At one level, I am matching interesting and accomplished individuals,
some of whom I have known for many years and others I am just getting
to know. At another level, I am working a mentor matching system.
I have a running tally with notes on it for each SEED mentee:

• mentorname #3 – contacted 17 July
  
  mentorname #1 – no response by 17 July
• mentorname #1 – Confirmed 13 July (#1 on list)
• mentorname #4 – Confirmed 18 July (#4 on list)
  
  mentorname #1 – no response by 17 July
• mentorname #2 – 19 July interested – may take a while to decide
  
  mentorname #1 – declined – works in her org. 14 July
• mentorname #1 – Contacted 7/9, out of the office until 21 July
• mentorname #5 – contacted 15 July
  
  mentorname #4 – declined 15 July
  
  mentorname #1 – declined 14 July
• mentorname #1 – Confirmed 10 July (#1 on list)

The Participant is not kept informed of each step in the match process. They do not know which potential mentor from the “Wish List” is contacted. Potential mentors need to have space and time to consider the possibilities of a mentoring partnership without risk of offending the potential mentee or interfering with future communications with them or their manager.

More information on the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program
is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/

On August 03, 2006, I wrote about Sun’s unofficial April Fool’s Day Prank
Museum near the lobby of Menlo Park building 17. This week, my husband
repaired one of the prank artifacts which had become damaged. So, here
are current pictures of the small but historic collection. Plus, some
news stories and links about Sun’s prank history.

Sun Prank Museum Photos

John Repairing 2003 Big Webtone Switch

Poster 2007 Black Box Prank

1990 Scott’s Arrow 1996 Cup

2008 Concrete Hardened Thumper

1996 Coffee Station 2007 Black Box Signs

1993 Sharkstation Marty Hess’ SunPuck

2008 MySQL dolphin prank

2008 Mardi Gras Have You Seen This Ham? Prank

1990 All the Wood Behind 1 Arrow Photo of Scott in His Office

News and Links on Sun Pranks

• 
  Do I Still Have a Job? Friday Mar 28, 2008 entry on Jonathan’s
  Blog
• 
  April 1: When Sun Microsystems has fun
  By Rochelle Garner and Connie Guglielmo Bloomberg News, April 1, 2008,
  International Herald Tribune
• 
  Sun prank takes potshots at CEO proclivities
  April 4, 2007 10:09 AM PDT, Posted by Stephen Shankland,
  c/net News.com NewsBlog
• 
  April Fool’s Pranks At Sun I Have Been Involved With Apr 01, 2007 on
  Dave Edstrom’s Catalyst – Edstrom Photons-Electrons blog
• 
  Sun Microsystems Celebrates 25th Anniversary –
  Sun Pranks From the Past 2005
• 
  EMOTIONS AND STAKES RUN HIGH AT FORMULA SUN ONE GRAND PRIX CHAMPIONSHIP
  SANTA CLARA, CA — March 30, 2001, Sun Press Release

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson