Friday, 21 May 2010 20:20 by
Admin
“Wayne McKinnon has been certified in the Mentor Mastery Program because of his outstanding ability to help people move to work of higher value. Wayne is one of less than twenty five people in the world, and one of few in Canada that are part of this program. Wayne is the only resource in Canada who deals with the unique challenges faced by technical people who want to maximize their potential Alan Weiss explains.
The Mentor Program is intended to significantly increase the success of consulting service providers. It is directed at all providers of professional consulting services who wish to create greater value for their clients.
Weiss had set up the Mentor Program in 1996. Since then, he had assisted more than 700 consultants. Wayne himself had worked with Alan Weiss since 2001. A significant part of Wayne's success in creating results for his clients was based directly on this co-operation.
In addition to the direct assistance provided by Wayne, the program offers membership in an international network of several hundred colleagues. Each mentee is given access to Alan Weiss’ private consultants’ forum on the Internet known as “Alan’s Forums” where participants provide selective advice to one another. Within this global network that extends from Canada via Europe and Asia to New Zealand professionals are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
As of this writing, Wayne has only two more spots open until the next term for new mentees who want to work with him.
About the program
When my daughter wanted to pursue the sport of synchronized swimming, I have to admit that as a guy who plays hockey, I just couldn't relate to the sport, at least until I saw the rigorous training and hours of dedication that go into creating athletes at an incredible fitness level.
When she started racing for the school swim team, those skills in a very different discipline made her a real asset to her team. Who would have thought that spending a lot of time under water without breathing would be a useful skill in a relay race?
What transferable skills are you developing?
© Wayne McKinnon 2010. All rights reserved.
I should have titled this video " What do Quarks, screwdrivers and Kingsford charcoal have in common.
© Wayne McKinnon 2010. All rights reserved.
Sink or swim might work for the person who has the skills but is not motivated to use them, however if this is the only tactic in a mentor’s toolbox, they could cause quite a few people to drown for the one or two that make it.
If you want someone to take on more responsibility, move up in their career and get promoted, ensure they have an adequate supply of the right tools for career advancement, and just like the rock in the picture below, skills can erode when not maintained.
NOTE: This picture was taken in 2009 at Percé, Quebec, Canada, at the tip of the Gaspe Peninsula where the Saint Lawrence River empties into the Atlantic Ocean. In the distance you can see Percé Rock.
If you sink in the great lakes, you might eventually end up here.
© Wayne McKinnon 2010. All rights reserved.
"You Can't Think With Your Tool Belt On® is our registered trademark. Please use the ® whenever the phrase "You Can't Think With Your Tool Belt On" is used in connection with our newsletter or our workshops.
One of the challenges that I often see people struggle with as they move up in their careers, is the dificulty they have developing skills that enable them to share their knowledge with someone else. People who are very good at something often have difficulty explaining it. Providing guidance and helping someone is a separate skill from actually doing the job, and a good mentor is good at both.
© Wayne McKinnon 2010. All rights reserved.
The movie Field of Dreams seems to have set the tone for business over the last 20 years.
“If you build it they will come” has become the mantra of many service providers, but are the successful ones really beginning with technology and technical design, or do they actually have a service strategy in place that is simply supported by technology?
In the movie, Kevin Costner’s character Ray Kinsella is portrayed as a novice farmer, which I believe gives him a distinct advantage in this story because he didn’t know squat about dirt.
If Costner’s character, Ray had been a farming specialist, he would have spent his time measuring the composite makeup of the soil and analyzing the amounts of sand, clay and potassium. He would have gotten bogged down in discussions about the technical merits of broadcast seeding versus seed drilling. If he was a technology type, he might have spent all his money on aquiring the best GPS.
What Ray did focus on was the strategic decision to either produce corn or fulfill dreams. Decision made, Ray invested his time and money into ensuring that he had the necessary service assets – namely bleachers and a ball diamond – in place to fulfill dreams. He didn’t start by enriching the soil or buying equipment in hopes that he could find a business use for it.
© Wayne McKinnon 2010. All rights reserved.
In the past, unions performed two important roles: 1) Organize workers in solidarity against poor wages and working conditions; 2) Lobby the government in support of issues important to the union and its members.
Unions have been so effective in their lobbying efforts that there are now significant health and safety laws in place in most developed countries, so lobbying has achieved many of the union’s goals and their work here is nearly complete.
If we can set aside for a moment, the hotly debated issue of preserve jobs in a declining market, then the way I see it, the primary value that a union provides to its members in the modern world is not the same value as when unions began. The higher value is the same value that industry associations provide to their members:
Personal/professional development
Business intelligence
Promotional activities to strengthen the brand
Repositioning the value of the brand in the eyes of the consumer.
Identifying trends, new opportunities and growth potential
The Certified Management Accountants (CMA) is one example that unions can learn from. By placing billboard ads and running radio spots depicting a management team huddled around a fortune cookie, they have clearly positioned a certified management accountant as a better alternative when it comes time to make decisions. As a result, the association has broadened the number of opportunities available to its members. Combined with learning opportunities and neworking with peers, this is part of the value of a modern union. I suppose the alternate approach they could have taken is to attempt to mandate that anyone wanting to use a spreadsheet must be certified…
© Wayne McKinnon 2010. All rights reserved.
Silos are dangerous. There is no early warning system to let you know something is about to be flung over the wall at you, and the walls keep the teams in isolation, which creates us against them attitudes and forms barriers to working together.
One wall that is typically very high in many organizations is the one between the teams of development and Operations.
These teams cannot understand why there is so much conflict, and often come to the conclusion that it must be specific people that are at the root of the problem. If management is listening, then the knee jerk reaction is to dismiss the offending people and replace them with someone more suitable. This approach only provides a temporary fix. If nothing else changes, it won't be long before the same conflicts emerge and new people begin to look and act like their predecessors.
Some times ways of the past no longer serve the purpose they once did and the time comes to tear them down before they do significant damage.
© Wayne McKinnon 2010. All rights reserved.