Recently in Mentoring Category

For the first time in a while I spent fully half the weekend NOT working at anything but my embarrassing golf game and some online sleuthing into what I am convinced is a foolish "can't lose" medical device investment that a friend is trying to get me to participate in (before the greedy people grab the opportunity). So when I finally picked up Friday's (August 14) Wall Street Journal print edition on Saturday night and was immediately drawn to the front page feature: Flying Low Is Flying High As Demand for Crop-Dusters Soars, I wasn't sure what instinct was drawing me to relate it to the experience of health care leaders. Well the 24 online comments as of this writing, all by and about the "ag pilots" celebrated in this article, revealed no health care gadflies leaping to make the connection. So here goes...

I may be slow. It took two hits about Sergio Marchionne before I got him on the blog. The impetus to take the leap came when Business Week published the April 2 article, How Fiat's Marchionne Can Help Chrysler by Carol Matlack. But I do take credit for noticing and not forgetting when I first thought there was something here for health care leaders -after reading the Harvard Business Review's Fiat's Extreme Makeover in December of 2008, which was authored by Mr. Marchionne himself. Read the HBR piece first, for its strong focus on leadership culture, to see why Marchionne may be able to teach Chrysler - and health care leaders - a few things...

Learning From Heroes, a short essay in the March, 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review may explain why some of us have become less enamored with "how to" business books. Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten, principals of 800-CEO-Read, point out that there are five recurring challenges in business and life - which also apply to health care leaders ...

In Finding Anchors in the Storm: Mentors (Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2009) Toddi Gutner advises young workers to identify and use mentors to provide practical, operational, career guidance as they navigate the corporate world and the recession. "About 70% of Fortune 500 companies offer mentoring programs... At International Business Machines, for example, every employee is assigned a 'connection coach' before their first day; after they join, workers are assigned a formal mentor." Why would IBM do dedicate this much human resource to young people? As a profit making entity it must view mentoring as a strategic investment in its human capital.

Do hospitals, academic medical centers, and medical group practices routinely assign mentors to 70% of trainees, young staff physicians, junior scientists and faculty? Do we strategically invest in longitudinally committed coaches and mentors who have the experience to guide promising but raw talent through the arcane channels of career development and accelerate their progress? Or do we instead rely on Darwinian survival that anticipates the fittest among these talented young people will effectively manage challenging professional relationships, navigate arcane academic and scientific politics, and grow careers that result in substantial clinical and scientific advancement? Not to mention developing the newly required managerial skills essential to leadership success. That's how corporations used to do it. But they figured out that strategic investment in talent and career development yields results. We can use results now. What models are out there at hospitals, AMC's, and medical groups?