Business Mentoring
DESCRIPTIONBusiness Mentoring involves having a successful business person or consultant act as a mentor to a new or struggling business.
The mentor’s role is to:
• provide guidance and direction;
• act as a sounding board for ideas;
• help link the business with other experience, skills and networks that will benefit the business;
• help identify needs and skill deficiencies;
• maintain confidentiality.
The mentor’s role is not to:
• be involved in the day to day running of the business; or,
• have any rights in the intellectual property of the mentoree or their business.
USES• To make use of the skill and experience that exist with successful people in a community and help a business grow and prosper.
• To provide worthwhile activity for retired, semi-employed, skilled and experienced people.
HOW IT WORKSMentoring usually implies a relationship between the mentor and client for a fixed period. However, there are two other ways in which mentors can be used, without a relationship that lasts over time. These are:
• troubleshooting—helping sort out a particular problem;
• presenting at seminars and workshops.
Mentoring usually implies a one-to-one relationship. However, mentoring can be from a group of mentors, in two ways:
• a voluntary board of directors—on ongoing advisory role, without any liability, for a fixed period;
• trouble-shooting with a panel of experts.
Mentors commonly provide their services for free as a way of giving something back to the community. However, there are programs where mentors are paid.
The client is assessed and where appropriate, matched with a suitable mentor. To ensure the resource is well used and outcomes are realised, it is important to target the service at businesses for which it will make a difference and where the proprietors want to learn.
Programs may be targeted generally at businesses that can benefit, or at particular socio-economic groups, or particular industries where there is growth potential (e.g. targeting women, New Enterprise Incentive Scheme participants, businesses with export potential). Targeting is an important element in making any mentor program work well.
There are several examples around, ranging from the informal to the formal. Following are some examples.
• Business Incubators, Business Enterprise Centres and other organisations involved with new start businesses often have informal mentoring programs to help their clients, drawing on polls of volunteers available to them. Mentoring becomes a tool they use and this can be very cost effective, as their core costs are already covered and they already provide the intermediary role. With Business Incubators, the on site manager is already something akin to a mentor, even though other mentors may be used.
• The NEIS program, which has a formal mentoring component.
• Carefully targeted formal mentoring programs.
Mentoring programs usually involve a degree of networking and referral to professionals.
Mentorees will often have to pay a fee to be involved (e.g. $250) but, unless the fee is high or overheads are absorbed elsewhere, this will not cover all the costs.
PREREQUISITES• Businesses in a community wanting mentoring assistance and being prepared to invest significant amounts of time, e.g. 50 hours over a 6 month period.
• A pool of potential mentors in the community prepared to invest significant amounts of time.
• An intermediary organisation experienced in business counselling, assessment and match making. This could be the organisation to run a mentoring program or provide necessary assistance to the mentoring service.
HOW TO STARTGiven that either someone or an organisation is championing the concept, it then revolves around planning. A feasibility study can be done and a business plan developed. However, if there is no complementary intermediary organisation involved then this is to be addressed in the planning.
STRENGTHS A very good way to transfer skill and experience from successful business people to other emerging businesses.
WEAKNESSES• Success will depend on targeting the service and the quality of the match that is made. There needs to be a fit when it comes to personality, industry knowledge and the business management skill and experience offered and required.
• A mentor will never have all the answers and solid backup is required to ensure specialists are called in as required.
• Mentoring will not appeal to everyone, nor is it able to sort out all the needs of developing businesses.
• Mentoring services are not generally able to support themselves, unless linked with a larger complementary organisation and its mix of business development services.
WARNINGSTo achieve a good match the business needs to be carefully assessed before hand. This requires business diagnostic experience. Otherwise a mentor may waste their time trying to help a business that has no chance of success, or inappropriate skills may be deployed.
Mentors need to be backed up and supported by an intermediary agency, for input of knowledge outside their expertise, and to ensure the match is working and expectations are being met.
Not all successful and willing business people make good mentors. To be a good mentor it is important the mentor plays a facilitative role and does not get involved in the management of the business. This is not always easy for successful business people, although business professionals are more used to acting in this way.
Expectations on both sides need to be understood, managed and monitored. Mentoring is an on the job training and support tool for businesses, but it is not an alternative to people managing the business themselves.
The cost of providing the intermediary service is often more than people expect, as it involves:
• marketing;
• screening potential mentors;
• screening and assessing potential clients;
• monitoring; and
• back-up.
Even though there are always mentors willing to act for free, this does not mean a service can operate without financial resources.
Mentoring requires a significant investment of time from both the mentor and mentoree, e.g. fifty hours over a six-month period.
Mentoring is a service for people who are in business, not for intenders. Criteria may specify that the business has to have been in existence for a period of time and that it is the primary source of income for the participant.
INDICATIVE PRICE/COSTS• This is very hard to determine as it depends on the arrangements put in place to offer the mentoring and to what extent the mentoring is integrated with other complementary business development services.
• A feasibility study will cost between $10,000-$30,000.
• In order to be financially viable, it may be necessary for the service to secure ongoing funding. This need not be the case if the mentoring is picked up by an existing business development organisation as part of its core activities.
• Mentorees would be expected to pay a fee to access the service, although this may not be enough to fully cover the costs. The fee may be in the order of $250. A formal mentoring program can cost around $50,000pa.
MONITORING AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION• Where business development programs involving mentoring have been assessed it has been shown mentoring makes a significant difference to the business, e.g. NEIS evaluation.
• To ensure good use of resources business development outcomes need to be tracked to show how the mentoring has added value to a business over time.
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