Tool Mentoring - A suggested practice

Kishore (March 2003)

Mentoring is a well known best practice. A new employee is assigned to a veteran of the organization who can guide the new person to be able to adjust to the new culture and organization easily. One can always seek help from Mentor. 

Of late, I have felt that organizations should start a new practice called "Tool Mentor". I am not sure whether it is a practice already followed or I am inventing a new concept. In the Knowledge Driven organization, information and knowledge is key.  Knowledge Management is a concept is often talked about but difficult to implement. I feel this Tool Mentoring concept falls under Knowledge Management. 

With numerous tools coming up in market, organizations are often faced with challenges:

- What tool should I select?
- Is it worth the investment?
- How do we make best out of the tool?
- Are we justifying the investment?

and so on..

Tool Mentor is a person who has previous experience with the tool. He gets an additional responsibility to help the organization to make best out of the tool. By doing this, tool mentor not only gets an opportunity to use his skill effectively but keep his knowledge 'current'. 

By maintaining a list of tool mentors and publishing the same on intranet, organization will be able to make best out of the 'talent pool' within the organization. 

e.g. Imagine you have an accomplished expert on a particular tool (say Microsoft Project). Organization has been facing problems in Project Management and is looking out for a good Project Management tool and also training. Even the tool has been purchased and has now become shelf ware because no one knows how to use it. 

Will the organization be justified in spending lot of money not only in purchasing a new tool? Will they be justified in spending lot of money on training? Would it not make sense for the organization to find talent within company and make best out of the existing talent pool?

This may be happening in many organizations. Lack of information and lack of proper knowledge Management still continues to be a problem. 

Suggestions:

If you are a manager in your company, take inventory of all the skills in your team. Question yourself: What are the talents and skills of members that are going waste? Can those skills be of use somewhere else? Is any department within the company suffering due to lack of training. By having access to an expert, any company can make best of the tools they have and make productivity improvements. 

Summary

Do not let investment made by company in tools go waste, but 'mismanagement'. Look for champions and entrust responsibilities to people. Employees like to contribute their best to the organization. They want visibility. They want to be recognized for their skills, talents. By providing more opportunities outside team boundaries to people. People make the difference in organizations. By providing more opportunities to people to make the difference organization succeeds.

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