Category Archives: Mentoring & Other Business

Mentor matching for the SEED legacy StorageTek term is going very
well. We have 14 out of 28 participants matched so far. A wide variety
of very senior executives have signed up as mentors this term:
they include VPs from Scalable Systems, IT, Legal, Software, and Operations.
Almost every participant has been matched with either their first or
second choice mentor. Of course, some mentors have declined to participate
but in general we are getting a high number of acceptances.

Some Participants will be considered by six or more potential Mentors before a
good match is found. Others are immediately matched with their first choice.
Each potential Mentor may have multiple email, phone, or personal contacts
with SEED’s program staff. Potential Mentors are contacted serially in
priority order and each one may take a long time to respond and then decide.

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.

The final versions of the legacy-StorageTek SEED term Mentor
Wish Lists were due in at 9 a.m. today, California time. Tanya
Jankot and I put together a first contact list based on those
28 wish lists. Then, I sent out the first email invitations to
the potential mentors. Only two immediately responded declining
the invitation. We already have one match plus five strong
expressions of interest – a good start!

Last term, we completed all of the matches in 3 weeks. It is more
usual to take 6 weeks for the full mentor matching cycle.

All of the first pass SEED Mentor Wish Lists have been turned
in. Today was the deadline. Tanya Jankot and I have been reviewing
the lists as they arrived. Tanya has also been working with the
new SEEDs on personalizing their web pages.

I have responded to a large number of the SEED participants advising
changes in choice or presentation. I hope
we get all of those revised lists in today too. Sometimes
participants include potential mentors who are known to be unavailable
(and are so marked on the “Potential Mentors” web page),
sometimes they provide reasons for preference which will
not represent them at their best to a potential mentor.

Tomorrow morning, Tanya and I will review all of the lists, put togther
the first pass contact list, and send out the first invitations
to the mentors themselves. I hope we will have our first matches
made by this time tomorrow!

Five of the 28 new SEED participants have already submitted their
Mentor Wish Lists. All are due Monday, 10 April. Tanya has prepared
the participants’ personal web pages and they are now sending her pictures
and personalizing them. These web pages will be their first introduction
to potential mentors considering a match.

I am hearing the usual complaints and frustrations on how hard it is to
prepare a Mentor Wish List. Potential Mentors should be included on the
list primarily because of their accomplishments, experience, personality, capabilities, or skills. Each participant needs
to make two hard decisions:

• What they want to learn
• Who has already accomplished the kind of things they want to do
  
  (that is, who is already down the path that they see themselves walking)

The SEED Engineering mentoring program takes a long-term view and
does not have a preference for one kind of learning over another. That is,
the learning does not have to have anything to do with the participant’s
current job. Some people want to learn to be better
technical managers, others want to know how to get their ideas to customers
faster. Many want to improve their soft skills: public presentation/speaking,
negotiating, conflict management, and coaching. Some want to improve their
work and family balance and still have a great career. It takes time
and mature consideration to work through all of this. Creating the
“Mentor Wish List” is probably the hardest part of the SEED program.

Today, the SEED Engineering mentoring
Selection Committee picked 28 participants to form
the June-December 2006 term. All of them came to Sun
from StorageTek Engineering. This looks like a good
and generally a very experienced group.

They now have until 10 April to prepare their
15 name prioritized Mentor Wish Lists. Between now
and then, Tanya Jankot will create the individual web pages which will
support their requests to potential executive mentors
when we start the matching process.

Tanya and I have also been polishing up the SEED refrence web pages
on which the new participants will rely on building their
lists (examples, processes, and the potential mentor list).
It will be interesting to see what questions they ask.

All legacy StorageTek staff applications to the SEED mentoring program
were due on Friday. The executive Selection Committee (1 Fellow/VP,
5 Distinguished Engineers/Directors, 2 Directors) started reviewing
application materials on Saturday morning. All web submission pages
are closed down now. The Selection Committee meets on 30 March and the
selection announcements will be that day.

35 people applied; 32 were qualified for consideration. That is, 3 only
sent in partial applications or did not get management approval to
participate. 1 additional person called and sent several emails but
never actually submitted anything.

The geographic patterns of this group
are different than what we usually get in SEED. All but one are working
in the USA. All but one of those is working in Colorado. Only 1/4 have
non-USA origin. In SEED’s last world-wide term, over half worked outside
of the USA and 3/4 had non-USA origin. It will be interesting to find out
what, if any, difference this makes in managing and matching this term.

As of now, we have 23 applications for the legacy StorageTek
SEED Engineering mentoring term. Of those 23, 11 have
all of the required materials: form, resume, and
manager’s letter of recommendation. That 11 is eligible
for consideration by the Selection Committee next week. The
deadline for all materials is this Friday, 24 March.

Tommorrow morning, we hold our final call-in meeting to let potential
participants and their managers ask questions. Even
though almost all of the applicants are based in Colorado, we
are noticing new cultural differences with this term that we have
not seen running SEED terms in India, China, Europe, and the
Middle East. Tanya Jankot has gotten email notes addressed
to “Dear Ms. Jankot” (a very un-Sun-like formality of address).
Many in this group seem to get everything ready before they send in
any piece of their application. That is, we are often receiving
the form, resume, and manager’s letter of recommendation all in
one day. More usually, SEED is sent the form and the rest of it
trickles in bit by bit over the following week.

I talked with one of the legacy StorageTek executives this
morning who said that submitting information through an internal
web page rather than on paper is new to them. All in all, I think this
term will provide good learning both for the legacy Sun and the newly
acquired StorageTek staff.