A Tryst with Speed Mentoring
Here I am for my 6th and last blog on my Social Sabbatical experience in Tunis. Can’t believe it myself — So rich was my learning experience, that I was there for only 20 working days and could produce 6 blogs. And this one is on a truly unique experience, my first with speed mentoring, as a mentor to the founders of a few start-ups. In this blog I will narrate my experience and share the answers to 3 questions from these budding entrepreneurs, for which I thought I could provide valuable insights.
The speed-mentoring event was organized by Mohamed Adnen Ben Hadj Yahia a.k.a Nino, our local coordinator for Pyxera, on 13th February. The event was sponsored by Pyxera and hosted at El FabSpace Lac, a start-up accelerator in Tunis co-founded by Nino.
Until then, I had not heard of the term speed mentoring. I was told that it is like speed dating. But then, I hadn’t seen speed dating either. So, I went there completely clueless, not knowing what to expect. At the location, I found Nino, 3 other sabbatical colleagues from SAP and some freelancers and founders of start-ups. We began with an introduction round, in which Nino explained to us that we from the Social Sabbatical would play the role of mentors to the entrepreneurs. The mentors and mentees would be seated across each other at a long table and each mentee would get to spend 15 minutes with a mentor. During these 15 minutes, they could ask us for our guidance on any matter. After 15 minutes, the timer will ring an alert and after that each mentee would move 1 seat to the right, to a new mentor. The event was planned for 90 minutes, so during this period I had the opportunity to interact with 5 mentees. Among them were the founder of a delivery service using bikes called Pedalo, the founder of a blockchain company called Coinsence.org, a freelance SAP ERP consultant, and a freelancer providing a software service to a bank. All of these were bright individuals with entrepreneurial spirits who had sacrificed opportunities to work in Europe or at multi-nationals in Tunisia.
I was initially unsure if I could be of any help to them at all. I had neither entrepreneurial experience nor experience working in small companies. The only experience I had was working in a global multi-national. But then I was determined to make the best of my opportunity — it was my first one and could also be my last one — I didn’t want to have regrets later. So, I began by making it clear during our introductions that my subjects of expertise are management and project management in large companies. So, here are 3 questions where I thought I could add most value:
1) My company is very small, and we are like friends and family. However, from time to time my employees mess up and I find it very difficult to give them feedback.
A: This is a typical problem faced by a new boss who is managing his former peers or by a boss in a family-run business where the employee is his close relative, or by a boss in a business where the employee is also a founder or an investor in the company.
The first step in solving this problem is to acknowledge that any business needs to be run professionally, and this is something that cannot be compromised. Any lapse could cost not only the business, but also the relationships. Feedback on performance is one of the building blocks of organizations, without which they cannot survive, let alone grow.
The next step is to draw clear lines between the personal and the professional part of your relationships. As a boss, you can never be friends, but you can be friendly. Friends are equals. But as a boss, you have role power over your employees and influence over their bread and butter. So, you are never friends, no matter what you think or how hard you try. However, you have a choice to be friendly i.e. be polite but firm, give feedback with a smile, explain to them their specific behavior and the impact of it and then listen to them empathetically.
2) As a start-up, I cannot attract and hire good talent. The ones I have hired are not up to the mark and I end up spending a lot of my time on supporting and reviewing their work.
A: This is a problem with the hiring mindset. You need to hire only candidates who can do the job for you i.e. get independent within a short span of time. Otherwise even after your spending bulk of your time with them, their quality of work will not be up to the mark. In that case it’s better to do the job yourself.
We see in football that even 1 weak player can cost a team of 11 the match. Now imagine the impact of 1 weak player on a team of 4. So, despite your challenges as a start-up, the key is to expand only to the extent that you find good people. Jim Collins said, “People are not your most important asset.. the right people are”. Hire like-minded individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit. Until you find them, you need to accept only jobs or tasks which you can do by yourself. Instead of hiring incompetent engineers to delegate core work, consider hiring competent assistants to delegate admin work, which will achieve the effect of saving time for you.
3) I am struggling to get investors to invest in my start-up, without which my company can’t grow further (not surprisingly, the most common question I faced on that day)
A: Unfortunately, I have no experience with raising investments. From what I hear, fundamentally you are trying to influence them, and what I can do, is take you through the basics of influence. When you are asking someone to invest, you are asking them to trust you with their money. There are 2 problems in this: First, you are a stranger to them, and strangers are not to be trusted anyways, and second, their money, especially cash, is the last thing they want to trust anyone with. Failure on your side inevitably results in loss for them. So, no matter how hard you try to persuade them at this point in time, you are likely to fail.
However, what you can do is to increase your chances for investments in the future. In his book Winning ’em Over, Professor Jay Conger talks of 2 kinds of influence you have at your disposal: expertise power and relationship power.
Expertise power is the influence you have over people through your expertise on a subject. If people believe you are a subject matter expert, they will listen to you. What can you do to build subject matter expertise? Whatever subject, industry, or market your start-up is into, you need to not only know it in and out, but also demonstrate that you know it. This means, you need to be aware of all the research going on in that field, who the major researchers are, which universities and companies are active in that topic, what they are publishing etc. You need to subscribe to magazines, newsletters, YouTube channels etc. to tap into everything that is going on in that field. You need to know how that industry is doing in other markets, success and failure stories etc. You must be part of all social networks and you must also contribute content to these communities. Attend conferences, give talks, write blogs, answer questions etc. And finally, you must also develop the ability to communicate with the outside public on this topic. This requires the ability to convert complex technical aspects of your subject into easy-to-digest concepts such as features, benefits, costs, risks etc. It is important, however, to note that expertise power is limited to the subject of expertise and to the extent others believe in your expertise.
Relationship power is the influence you have over people through the quality of the relationship you have with them. This is the single biggest influence anyone can have, simply because it is limitless. In this you transact on the economy of your favor capital. If you have helped many people unconditionally multiple times, chances are more that when you need help, someone will step up for you. So, what do you need to do? Relationship power is dependent on the quality and quantity of your interactions with people. Quality is what you interact about and how you do so, quantity is about how frequently you do so. For a good quality of interaction, make it about them, not about you. First, get rid of any expectations from them. If you keep expecting, you are in for disappointment and you will kill any chances you have. Next, keep in touch with your potential investors, even after they reject you. For the quantity of interaction, try to meet them in person occasionally and at least keep in touch once a quarter. Call or email them asking them how they are doing, or, if you could meet them for a coffee just to pick their brains on a challenge you are facing. Join their events and volunteer to help them in any way you can. Request them if you could add them to your newsletters or publications. Invite them to your events. Over time, you will get new contacts and references, increasing your network. And you never know, with your powerful expertise and relationships, one fine day any one of them might decide to trust you with their money.
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At the end of the speed-mentoring, I was pleased with our interaction and my contribution; they could take with them some insights they didn’t have before. Thank you, Nino and Pyxera for facilitating this unique experience. And thank you SAP once again for this Social Sabbatical –an experience from which I shall keep drawing upon for the rest of my life.
