Reverse Mentor

I was reading "Six Ways to Boost Creativity" from the Corner Office and one of the ideas really caught my attention. That of hiring a "reverse mentor".

The idea is as follows: as the world is changing at such a rapid rate, it would be beneficial to hire someone younger (and more in touch with NG - new generation) to get you up to speed on new trends and developments; such as leveraging on social networking or blogsphere.

Reason I found it to be really attractive is this. Many of us might have the experience of the "old economy" that we are unfamiliar or even intimidated by the "new economy". I didn't use Facebook until much later (am a laggard in this respect) as it initially didn't have the appeal for me and also I didn't think it fits my professional profile.

It was not until I recognized the power of social networking and how I can leverage on it as a tool for marketing, positioning, and branding that I decided to take another look. Even that still didn't give me a compelling reason to make the leap. Then, after realizing that social networking if done right, in a professional manner, with consistency, and done within the context of my work-flow; it can not only be effective, it can also be profitable.

During my trip to Japan to attend the International Aikido Federation in 2008, I uploaded pictures and wrote about the event as the day unfolded. It generated much talk among my fellow Aikido practitioners who were in Singapore. In fact some of them visited my Facebook account throughout the trip in order to be updated on what's happening. I was flattered.

And then it struck me that using similar platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, and Blog) could allow me to update my friends and Schools that I work on (i) what we've been up to, (ii) share about our new developments, and (iii) engage them through meaningful and valuable discussions such as this.

In fact, through this channel, we have been able to let the Schools know that we were engaged by MOE to designe, develop, and deliver the training for School Staff Developers (SSDs) in April. And to my delight, several key people from Schools in fact asked me about the training.

That definitely gave us that added credibility that we've already established with Schools. Also, since they are on my Facebook, I didn't have to 'push' that information to them; they were actually 'pulled' to it.

An added point is that, as people will trust their friends more than advertisements; the fact that these photos were made available to "everyone" and not just "my friends" gave us that ability to share with others what we do in ways that were previously not available to us.

So, while I didn't exactly have a reverse mentor; I did manage to tap into this rich resource nonetheless. So, in case you are wondering, we are off to the next NG tools to give us the leverage to take us to 3.0.

Your friend,
Melvyn
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)