Category Archives: Mentoring & Other Business

Welcome and Congratulations to the 84 New Mentoring Pairs
of SEED’s September 2008 – September 2009 Recent Hire Term (23) and
the September 2008 – March 2009 Established Staff Term (61):
we are honored and delighted to include them in Sun’s worldwide
Engineering mentoring program!

These terms had a 57 day matching cycle (9 July – 4 September 2008).
76% were matched in the first 14 days. Some additional metrics:

• Executive Mentors
• Recent Hire Term: 5 Vice Presidents or Fellows (22%), 10 Distinguished
  Engineers or Directors (43%), and 8 other titles (35%). 65% executive mentors
• Established Staff Term: 17 Vice Presidents or Fellows (28%), 34 Distinguished
  Engineers or Directors (56%), and 10 other titles (16%). 84% executive mentors
• Local vs. Distant
• Recent Hire Term: 5 mentoring partners working locally (22%), 18
  working at a distance – in another state or country (78%)
• Established Staff Term: 14 mentoring partners working locally (23%), 47
  working at a distance – in another state or country (77%)
• Meeting Priorities
• 77% of mentees were matched with one of their top four mentor requests
• 54 mentees were matched with their 1st or 2nd priority mentor (64%)
• 11 mentees were matched with their 3rd or 4th priority mentor (13%)
• 19 mentees were matched with a mentor lower than 4th in priority (23%)

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

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/