BATMAN and Robin, Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle. What do they have in common? Well, it's that mentor-protégé relationship, the yin bonding with the yang, experience versus inexperience, the learned leading the learner. I was researching mentoring last week after hearing that it was actually the latest solution to our credit crisis.
Our beleaguered Chancellor has recognised the need to do more to support small businesses through the current downturn in the UK economy. Great. He's also decided more young people should be encouraged to start a business.
To do this he is placin
g responsibility on the shoulders of existing businesses by recruiting them as mentors. However, this sounds a lot like a "get out of jail free" card for the Government by passing responsibility – and ultimately blame – for business development to business.
Alistair Darling is urging more business owners to share the knowledge and experience they have established over the years to help young people and start-up businesses. Apparently, to this end, the minister for business, Baroness Shriti Vadera, is exploring how the Government could recruit more mentors across the country.
There are plans to work with a global public service reform agency to develop a better understanding of good practice in corporate mentoring. And there will be specific funds allocated to provide dedicated enterprise support and co- ordinate a national mentoring network for women in business.
I remember writing about this a long time ago. There it was, on the BBC website, on April 13, 2000: "Mentors are to be enlisted by the Scottish Executive to work with young firms with the aim of helping them move forward." Not for the first time have we found ourselves streets ahead of our Sassenach friends. Forgive me if I sound a little smug.
Since 2000 the Scottish initiative has grown year on year. Around £300,000 a year is budgeted for this service. There are currently 500 mentors who worked with around 600 businesses last year and there are plans to expand that to more than 1,000 businesses this year.
For the second time in a couple of weeks I found myself nodding in approval, coming out in favour of Scottish Enterprise. It's really quite disturbing.
I may ultimately, however, be guilty of damning with faint praise; the scheme is clearly working, albeit in a devolved capacity, paid for by SE but in reality delivered on a day-to-day, relationship-to-relationship, heart-to-heart basis by the ultra hard-working Chambers of Commerce around the country.
Most ambitious, growth-driven businesses are populated with the under-35s, indeed, under-25s in a number of cases. The ability to work incredible hours, under huge stress, does take its toll and some of these under-35s tend to look like over-60s. But looking older and acting older are two very different things.
The experience that can be shared with a young team is vast. And the wealth of contacts and favours a mentor can call on is immense. My experience of working with a mentor was inordinately valuable. We learned short cuts to success and lessons from his past mistakes, and as a result we achieved faster and saved money in the process. I learned how to chair a board meeting – effectively. I learned how to read between the lines of the management accounts quickly and accurately, how to network and close a deal. I also learned that I still had a lot to learn about business.
A mentor is definitely more than just a company adviser. A mentor is also infinitely more beneficial than a consultant. I will always be truly grateful to mine for his patient endurance while he coached me to become a far better businesswoman than I could ever have imagined.
While I wholeheartedly agree with mentoring, not least because of my own experience, I wonder just how feasible it would be to make such a programme big enough to have the impact the Chancellor seeks. Surely all the best businessmen and women are too busy running their own award-winning, massively profitable businesses? Or are already dedicating what little available time they have to mentoring a select chosen few.
And what happens if it all goes wrong? The difference between good and bad advice could easily be the failure of a business. That's hardly going to impact positively on our already blighted economy.
My concern is that this sort of delegation of business development by the Government, and mentoring on a massive scale, could be dangerous; it's power without responsibility. Both have the power: the Government to delegate the delivery, and the mentor to guide and influence young business leaders. But neither has the ultimate responsibility. That rests heavily on the young businessman or woman, who probably lacks the experience to know good advice from bad.
Mentoring is great for business. Undoubtedly. But as a solution to the credit crunch? I think not. I suggest that Darling finds his own Batman, for this is surely a fantasy.
The full article contains 843 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
