Beware simplistic benchmarking. Ask questions. Do your homework
Roughly 75% of the work we do is to “fix up” mistakes made by other vendors or an organization’s staff. In a number of cases, the staff have read a program description in a magazine or newspaper article (written by someone who knows nothing about mentoring programs) and benchmark on mediocrity (without knowing it) or select a totally inappropriate model. The failure rate is high. Yet it doesn’t need to be that way.
A good case study is invaluable – but its value is gained only through intelligent and knowledgeable interpretation by people who know the reality -- no two programs are alike. One size doesn’t fit all. However, all too often the descriptions are taken at face value without understanding the context.
Our aim is to ensure members of the client’s Task Force or Steering Committee understand real life decisions that need to be made, why, when, how and who is responsible for each. Here’s an example taken from CMSI files along with the sort of questions that we raise (in case the client doesn’t) to guide the process, especially during the Planning and Design Phase.
Sample
CMSI helped a large, multinational start a Career Development Mentoring Program in a Mid-Atlantic region of the USA. During the Design Session, we had taken into consideration factors that typically are never mentioned in popular press articles. So we were ready for potential changes when the program was then rolled out to a location in California, then several other corners of the country. This is called “building in elasticity”. Judiciously, we anticipated that each group would likely differ in at least one or more ways that we could not afford to ignore – group size, culture and occupation for example. Yet it was vital to maintain some overall program consistency where it mattered. How to get the right balance so as to get maximum results? Knowing how to do this takes experience of the sort we’ve gained over the decades.
Let’s return to the subject of using superficial program descriptions to benchmark. What can go wrong? The description might fail to indicate there’s major program inconsistencies between locations. Or the description might not bother to describe key program components. Or the description might state a component is not important.
To answer the question, for our part, we ensured consistency could be maintained through uniform and clearly understood and articulated program goals, standard materials, partner training, and criteria for selection, amongst other things. In sum, keep case studies in perspective.
More case studiesMentoring the Many Faces of Diversity (PDF 175 KBytes)
