The virtual mentor

Imagine the unimaginable: New staff has been recruited, and following the introductory session on their first working day with their new company, they need to get a workplace set up. If they’re lucky, a good-hearted soul within the department already took care of a desk, and maybe a PC. Then their odyssey starts. Accounts, access rights, keys, identification badges, mobile phone, laptop, maybe a car, … and everything provided by different people spread all over the company. So they’re sent back and forth, everybody does want to help, and nobody seems to want to take any responsibility. If they’re even luckier, they are able to escape the loop.

Now, their biggest problem is, that their organisational knowledge tends toward zero. If somebody within the company does know how to walk her way through, then definitely not the novice. Surprisingly, knowledge about those routine details, even if undocumented, is usually excellent with a chosen few of the senior employees. The optimum solution would of course be to have a mentor accompany them, who takes up the responsibility of walking them through this process until they are all set up. Or to put it the other way round: The key problem is, that nobody wants to take this simple responsibility: “getting them all set up”.

What appears to the novices as a lack of orientation, manifests as a reluctance to take this responsibility as a whole with staff. Everybody does want to be responsible for their own part, but unfortunately that doesn’t help much. Just as little is it feasible to have a mentor accompanying new staff to walk them through this process.

But there is a vehicle that may solve both problems: the lack of orientation for novices, as well as the lack of trust among permanents during the process: circulation slips. Two or three sheets of paper, put in order by somebody with thorough organisational knowledge, can help find the path through the organisational thicket. And most importantly: It can carry signatures. First, by their superior, acknowledging any job related privileges, and thus silencing many useless discussions. Subsequently by every person involved in the process. So any successor can always see the approval of its predecessor.

That way, organisational mistrust can be eliminated, orientation be given, and as a cherry on the cake the sheet provides perfect documentation. The problem solution, again, had to create an atmosphere of mutual trust and assistance. Mere process view wouldn’t help.

This virtual mentor was still in use as of this writing and had been for a couple of years servicing many people.