Mentoring and corporate strategy

Mentoring as a Boiling Pot for Strategy REALisation

For many years now the dominant perspective on strategy has been that it is something that organisations have rather than as something people do.

What does it mean to have a real live strategy?

In order to move off the page and into reality, your strategy has to be adapted and adjusted into every-day activities for all employees.

It has to be translated into new goals that are meaningful to employees doing vastly different tasks and jobs. It has to become relevant to individuals, to people, their aspirations, strengths abilities and realities. 
In the best case, it's the employees themselves who translate strategy into personal goals and activities. In that way, people have a greater sense of ownership for achieving the strategy's realisation and a stronger connection to their place in that endeavour.

Mentoring is a space where two people can co-create, brainstorm, exchange ideas about and formulate plans for how that strategy can be made real.

Harnessing the Power of Mentoring as a place where Strategy comes alive. Strategy comes alive in mentoring sessions when you:

• Give strategic direction to mentoring conversations by outlining key topics and questions that will drive appropriate, strategic conversations.
• Help mentors and mentees move through an effective mentoring process that transforms and shapes their discussions, causes them to questions, innovate, challenge, support, critique. (in text link?)
• Empower people to become informal mentors so that the habit of strategic realisation is seeded and embedded across the company. (think about how you will support, encourage and reward this).
• If possible, create a forum where all participants can cross-pollinate ideas and experiences, and where strategy implementation can be assessed and feedback gathered. Same applies for strategic conversations as for change conversations! [please put in text link back to change page here]