One to One Mentoring

This is the model that we are most familiar with here in The Mowgli Foundation.  It traditionally involves two people, the Mentor and the Mentee and a ‘contract’ of some description will exist between them.  This can be a formal relationship or an informal arrangement and will to a large extent be dependent upon the needs of both individuals.

Co-Mentoring

This is a practice that may be adopted by two professionals in the same or similar fields.  The general premise is that they will meet on a regular basis for a set period of time, say one to two hours and each person will have the chance to be mentored by the other before swapping over and repeating the exercise through reversing the roles.

Peer Mentoring

This is a type of mentoring that is most frequently seen in large businesses and also in education and it is often likened to the ‘buddy system’ which is where one person who is say ‘new’ to a job or a school can be coached in a specific area by someone older or more experienced.  It is a system that is often used when cultural or social changes need to be assimilated quickly in order for the mentee to be working at the expected level of acheivement within a reasonable length of time.

Group Mentoring

Group mentoring normally consists of a small group of people – no more than about 12 usually – meeting on a regular basis for the purpose of development, usually related to personal development.  A good example of group mentoring might be the writers or coaching circle, where the group receives mutual support from the group, as well as  the ability to set goals and then build competencies around those goals.  Normally, there will be at least one facilitator/Mentor to lead the group and it’s discussions.

1. Funeral Parlour.  The only things guaranteed in life are death and taxes, therefore there will never be a downtime for a funeral parlour.

2. Bank or Loan Company.  Once again, without money our society doesn’t function, therefore being the person that offers the loans has to be lucrative.  Beware though, you need a licence to operate in most countries.

3. Local Tourism.  With more people choosing to stay at home for their holidays there has been a boom for the British Tourist industry which appears to be replicated across Europe and further afield.

4. Repairs.  Repairs and maintenance of any description are going through good times as people start feeling that they would rather ‘make do and mend’.

5. Online Shop.  Ecommerce sales were at a record £222 billion in the UK in 2008 and have been rising by around 36% year on year since the start of the century.  Low overheads mean lower costs which means greater profits which can be transferred in to increased marketing.  People are much happier shopping online than they were just five years ago.

Yes, these are written slightly tongue in cheek, and my personal belief is that unless a technological change occurs to make something obsolete, then any business can survive and thrive in a recession if they apply the the right attitude towards it.

The event is taking place at the brand new Executive Business Centre of Bournemouth University and is just one of many events that are scheduled throughout 2010 to celebrate Bournemouth’s 200th birthday.  You can get tickets to the event at the website http://www.ukbusinessbookfestival.co.uk/tickets.html so why not come along and say hello to Ian, and possibly Tony and probably me too!

They include issues about whether entrepreneurialism is celebrated and encouraged and what skills sets might be required.  We don’t teach our young people how to be in business in the UK, I’m not sure we teach them anywhere in the world either.  But as research consistently shows, it is the entrepreneurs and the small and start-up businesses that develop the highest and fastest growth, creating bigger and better opportunities for job creation and wealth along the way; if we don’t do something to encourage more people to get the business bug, then economies could suffer more than they need.

Global Entrepreneurship Week is a worldwide movement of entrepreneurial people, with millions unleashing their enterprising talents and turning their ideas into reality.  This is the time, if ever there was one, to explore the opportunities that becoming your own boss, running your own business and being entrepreneurial can offer.  And, through it all, for the whole journey, there are organisations like The Mowgli Foundation who can help you nurture your fledging business into full growth.  If you would like to find out more about our mentoring programme, get in touch with us and we’ll see what we can do.

Global Entrepreneurship Week takes place between 15th and 21st November and you can find what’s happening where from their website at www.gew.org.uk

Purpose of Role

The purpose of the Country Manager role is to manage the day to day running of the new Mowgli Jordanian chapter, ensuring it achieves the objectives set down by the Chapter Board of Trustees. The Country Manager will have three main areas of focus:

1. Achieve Chapter sustainability through fundraising and cost management
2. Support local entrepreneurs to build successful and sustainable businesses
3. Develop talent of local leaders through mentoring.

Key Duties

• Secure funding for the Chapter from corporate organisations, sponsors, philanthropists, trusts, foundations and government funding
• Manage all Chapter costs to budget agreed with the Chapter Board of Trustees
• Recruit local entrepreneurs as mentees to the programmes run by the Chapter
• Recruit local business leaders / established entrepreneurs to act as mentors for programmes run by the Chapter
• Manage all key Chapter relationships including local alliance partners, corporate partners and funders
• Maintain records of all relationships, mentors and mentees, and produce agreed reporting for the Board of Trustees
• Recruit, lead and manage the Chapter team
• Recruit, lead and manage Chapter volunteers
• Organise local events to promote the value of Mowgli mentoring
• Organise quarterly reviews with mentees and mentors, and other interested parties
• Communicate any suggestions or recommendations for improving the programme in the future.

Accountable to:

Jordanian Chapter Board of Trustee Members

Role commencement date:

Provisionally autumn 2010

Salary:

To be confirmed

How to Apply

If you feel you have the qualities and skills needed to fulfil this role then please send a comprehensive CV to Alicja Turner in the first instance.

As I come to the end of my third week – and just before I leave for a pre-planned holiday – I thought it would be good to make contact and share my early impressions. As we look to the future together, I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts, and your responses to my thoughts expressed below.

Firstly, I want to be clear that I am committed to building on the foundations that have already been laid. As well as the commitment of our Founder and the Board, we have a good staff and volunteer team, a programme that delivers value, and strong working partners and helpful relationships in a number of MENA countries and in the UK. And as a result we already have a group of mentors and entrepreneurs who are working together to, I hope, mutual benefit. We have learnt a lot in Mowgli’s start up phase.

We now need to move Mowgli from start up to consolidation and growth, and I’m looking forward to working with you to define and deliver the future. It is early days for me, but at this stage I see the priorities as being:

• Clarifying the proposition. A deeper understand of what we are trying to change, and how we define, assess and measure success. We know what we do – join up entrepreneurs with mentors. But why do we do it? What outcomes – in particular, what social outcomes – are we hoping to enable?
• Local presence. Working through the legal and practical implications of establishing sustainable local partnerships, with Jordan likely to the first “official” Mowgli Chapter (as we are calling them).
• Effective programme. Continuing to develop and deliver the mentor/mentee programme, with the next event in Syria in October, and the first UK event in Manchester in November. We need to learn from what we have done so that we are as effective as possible in delivering the outcomes we aspire to.
• Developing waiting lists. Wouldn’t it be great if we had waiting lists of potential mentors and entrepreneurs, all of whom were qualified and ready to go, and waiting for us to set up events where we could join them together?
• Building sustainability. Balancing the development of commercial and philanthropic funding to create a sustainable business model for Mowgli as a whole, and ensuring that Mowgli as an organisation is itself healthy and sustainable.

Do you agree with my list of priorities?  If not, what would you change or add? I’d really appreciate your input.

Thank you for the part you play in making mentoring available in places where it can really make a difference.

With my regards,

Ian

It’s ‘All Change’ at Mowgli

Over the last month or so, we have seen some big changes at the Mowgli Foundation.  Firstly we have bid farewell to Simon Edwards as CEO of the Mowgli Foundation.  Fortunately he’s not gone far and is still working with us to manage the mentoring programme.  He was offered a great opportunity to develop a mentoring programme for service-men and we are really pleased that he’s been able to take the experience he’s had with us to a new opportunity.

As a result though, we now have a brand new CEO in the form of Ian McKay who was already a Mowgli Mentor, and who has agreed to step into the role that will lead Mowgli into the future.  You can read more about Ian on his new Mowgli Blog and you can find out about his five key priorities as well.

The final change is that Mowgli has moved offices too.  We have moved to a lovely waterfront location in the heart of Bristol and are now co-loated with other social enterprises and charities at:

The 3rd Floor
Bush House
72 Prince Street
Bristol
BS1 4QD
UK

You can still call us on +44 (0)775808 1995 and email Alicja on alicja.turner(at)mowgli.org.uk

Upcoming Programmes

There are two programmes planned for the remainder of 2010.   We have the first UK Pilot taking place near Manchester between 26th and 29th November and the Syrian programme will take place 17 – 22 October (location to be confirmed).  But you can be sure that when we have confirmation of the dates, that they will be posted on the blog, Twitter and our Facebook group.

If you are interested in the UK or the Syrian programme either as a mentor or as an entrepreneur mentee, then you can find out more on the blog post entitled Mowgli Mentoring Experience UK Pilot Dates Announced.

What have we been talking about on the Blog?

Over the last couple of months we’ve been talking about all sorts of things on the blog including posts about Social Intelligence and how it can be applied to both business and mentoring.  We’ve also just started chatting about the 5 M’s of Mentoring too and you might find some of our information on subjects like motivation of interest

What have we been talking about on the social networks?

Mowgli has been busy on the social networks too and on the Mowgli Foundation’s Linkedin group we’ve been discussing a wide variety topics including who we could invite to be a champion for Mowgli in the UK and asking the question Mentoring, is it worth it?

You can also find us ….

helping out with the launch of Wamda, a brand new social network for entrepreneurs and businesses in the Middle East.  Wamda is the region’s most dynamic, comprehensive and connected entrepreneurial web platform.  The website, wamda.com, which is set to launch soon will only come alive with the power of your sparks and of your ideas.  If you’re an entrepreneur looking for resources or to share ideas and connect with others in the field, Wamda is for you.

People are being encouraged to sign up to either be a beta tester or for full access to the site at www.wamda.com.   They are also on Twitter and Facebook too – both of these locations have lots of articles and updates about Wamda and the region to  read and you can get involved in the debate and conversation about the entrepreneurial sphere.

Donations

Once again we have been fortunate enough to receive some very welcome donations from a number of people, including Christakis Partassides and Kerstin Potter and Carol Whitaker (who are both Mowgli Mentors).   The money they have donated helps us to continue the work we are doing with entrepreneurs in the Middle East, building a sustainable economy in some of their poorest areas.

If you would like to make a donation, we now have an account with JustGiving.com – the UK’s best known and leading online platform for charity giving, helping over 8,000 member charities raise more than £450 million in just over ten years.  If you would like to find out more about how JustGiving works or if you’d like to make a donation, then you can find out everything you need to know on our donation page at: http://www.justgiving.com/mowgli.

Monthly Competition

As you know the Mowgli Foundation blog is a multi-author platform and we have regular updates from several of the Mowgli Team.   Every one of our mentors and mentees also has the opportunity to write on our blog too and Alicja has suggested a monthly competition for the wider Mowgli family to encourage more people to try out blogging.  So, we have a prize of the best blog post each month which will be a copy of CK Prahalad’s ‘Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid’.  So, if you’d like a chance to win your own copy of this fantastic read, then add your blog post to the Mowgli site, and if you’ve forgotten your username and password, let Linda know and  she’ll send it out to you again.

What do you get:

• A world class mentoring and leadership development experience
• The tools and techniques you need to work effectively as a mentor
• Accommodation, flights and food for the duration of the training

Your commitment:

• After the training, you provide ongoing mentoring to the mentee you are placed with for a period of at least 12 months. This is undertaken at a distance.
• You also agree to become a Mowgli ambassador by writing on our blog, taking part in our LinkedIn group and other social networking activity.

Your background:

A minimum of 5 years professional experience and a successful track record as an entrepreneur or corporate executive?

An understanding that personal growth is achieved through contribution to the world?

A well developed network that you can access both for yourself and your mentee

Excellent communication skills

Well developed listening skills

An interest in gaining cross-cultural experience?

Interested?

Download the application form or make direct contact with Alicja Turner to get more information

As I explained in overall blog post last week, a meme is a concept based on that of a ‘gene’, except that it pertains to a unit of cultural difference, rather than a unit of racial difference (genes).  In the case of the Meme, they are those things that capture a social mood, imagination or moment in time (fads) or impart useful information (such as health information) and spread through society rapidly without seeming to be guided by any outside force or influence.   Excellent examples of meme’s are adverts, catch phrases, myths, common sense knowledge and stories that are repeated.  The reason I used some of the Internet memes in my Twitter campaign was to show the power that something so simple can have even though the thing it represents has no meaning in, and of, itself – although this isn’t the case with all memes as we shall see.

Meme’s and Mentors

Having a basic understanding of Memes is essential both for entrepreneurs and for business mentors – although not necessarily for the same reasons.    For mentors, understanding another persons memes is important because these underlying assumptions and pieces of learning are the things that drive your mentee to act in particular and very specific ways.  It has been suggested that the business of psychotherapy is concerned with removing ‘bad’ memes (assumptions or knowledge about the world) and substituting ‘good’ memes instead and might be analogous to reinstalling faulty software perhaps.

However, it is important to note that Meme’s themselves have no identify, nor can they replicate at will, nor do they have free will – they are simply a piece of information that is replicated (passed on) between people.  They are not good or bad, they simply ‘are’.

A mentor also needs to be aware when their own Meme’s clash with the person they are working with and then recognise that just because the Meme’s are different, doesn’t mean that either set is ‘bad’ or negative – just that there is a point of difference that possibly needs to be negotiated in some way.

Meme’s and Business

The idea of the Meme has to a large extent been hijacked by marketeers, they hope to use the power of a meme to create what are termed ‘viral marketing campaigns’, that is a marketing campaign, either in the form of a video, picture, tune or a catch-phrase with the intention of influencing someone’s buying decision.

But this limited idea of the Meme as a marketing tool vastly underrates their power and influence to help build a business.   For example, the culture of a business or organisation can largely be understood through it’s corporate Meme’s, that is the underlying assumptions about both the business, it’s clients, code of ethics, values and it’s perception of the world around it.  In other words, if you wish to change the culture of an organisation then you simply change the Meme.  For instance, if you wish to improve your customers perception of the quality of service, you promote people who hold strong customer focus and ethics to positions of influence and allow their ideology to ‘infect’ their teams.

This though is all very well for large companies and organisations, but what about the entrepreneur that is starting out?  In many ways it’s a simpler process to control how your burgeoning business is perceived, because the organisation is much smaller and flatter and often a single person is the figurehead.  Deciding what values your business needs to be known by could largely be determined by observing what your customers want and need and ensuring that the people you put in positions of influence are able to demonstrate meme’s around these areas.

However, it is worth bearing in mind that just because you want to change the meme, you may not have a choice as they are not universally transferable.  For instance setting objectives for businesses and rewarding achievement when the objectives are met is a deeply embedded meme in the Western world.  Yet, in societies where the ‘collective society’ is honoured then this could be highly destructive.   Remember in the same way that not everyone ‘get’s’ the joke – they have to understand it’s cultural and social context first!