The Privilege of Mentorship

“No man ever stood so tall as one who stooped to help a child” so the saying goes. This saying sounds simultaneously profoundly touching and somewhat condescending to me. I think of the act of helping the next generation somewhat differently. I think of it as a privilege granted to me by someone who trusts me enough to genuinely expect me to put them above my own life’s agenda.

Imagine a society where the ONLY way to achieve anything of significance in one’s life was to help others to achieve it… where one NATURALLY ascribed all of a person’s achievements to their TEACHER rather than directly to the person themselves. The consequences of having such a societal norm would transform society – no less. In order to succeed in such a society one would have to pick the right people to mentor and then devote oneself to making them better - MUCH BETTER - than oneself. This would be the only way to succeed since nothing we could do ourselves would ever result in acknowledgement to the doer but rather only to the teacher. We would be forced to convey all of what we have learned – not just the essentials – to the next generation and insist that they be better than we ever were. We would have to be sincerely engaged in this or we would have no hope of having achieved anything. Think of the consequences of such a societal norm. The next generation would be sincerely interested in learning from the previous since they could trust that the older generation would genuinely WANT (even for the most self serving of needs) to transfer all of their experience and knowledge to them. It would ensure progress – true progress - of our society, and it would empower all of us with a common purpose – to learn as much as we could from the experiences of past generations so as to be BETTER than them. It would make both teacher and student PROUD when the student exceeded the teacher! It would make us also pick and choose the very best teachers and students so that the possibility of truly moving past ourselves could be realized for both parties.

By now you are probably thinking “This can never REALLY happen! Right?” but history has already proved you wrong. This is the old eastern tradition of “GURU” and “CHELA”. In old eastern cultures a distinguished teacher simply walked the land teaching in villages and at other gatherings as he thought fit. They would naturally gather about a dozen or so younger people intent on learning as much as they could from the guru through experiencing life with the teacher. The guru for his part would carefully select these “chelas” so as to maximize the chances of producing, through them, a generation of gurus MUCH better than the present one since it was the ONLY way they had of truely achieving their lifes goals. Then the teacher would dedicate his life to transmitting as much of what he knew to these deciples as possible in the time left to him on earth. This is actually not such a foreign tradition even in the west. It is at the heart of Christianity itself. In other words not only is it POSSIBLE it is in fact part of the fabric of who we are today. But the tradition has been lost. Somewhere along the line society started to look no further than the performer rather than looking at the teacher. The teacher began to see the student as his “competition” and therefore started to teach them a little less than what they knew so that they would always have the upper hand over their students. One upmanship was born. Who can blame them for this. It is what they had to do to survive. But their survival has put our society at risk today. We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of our teachers. We are slowly – generation by generation – diminishing as a collective. We are all complicit in this evolution and we all have it in our power to change it if we so desire. Mentorship is one of the avenues to do that. If we each start by deciding to GENUINELY help someone realize their dreams by contributing our own experiences to their success – exposing all of the embarrassing mistakes that we have made along the way - with nothing asked in return except the sheer joy of watching a promising younger person succeed better than we ever could hope to, then we will have done something of GREAT significance in the world. We will have changed it forever. Mentorship is a privilege and those who perform well as mentors can be truly proud of their achievements and their legacy.

Inter-University Collaborations

According to Brian Uzzi, Benjamin F. Jones, and Stefan Wuchty of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management as quoted in Chemical and Engineering News this week http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/86/i41/8641notw11.html the amount of INTER university collaborations is on the rise in the US and also produces better quality research than INTRA university collaborations or single-author papers. It is apparently a very thorough and complete piece of work.

This is worth thinking about as two things happen around us 1: the financial crunch in North America is bound to put the squeeze on research dollars at universities eventually making it all the more important to utilize our research dollars in the best possible way. 2: Fields of research are interacting more and more and the BEST new discoveries now appear to come from those interfaces between previously quite disparate disciplines of science. Given that research dollars will be shrinking one can only assume that travel to meetings (especially meetings in OTHER disciplines) will be on the decline. So one can reasonably ask "How will intelligent, successful scientists in one discipline meet really successful scientists in another so that the most fruitful sorts of cross-discipline collaborations can develop?"

One answer is provided by services like that which ArrowCan Partners Inc provides. Last year we connected more that 100 scientists in Canada with others in seemingly orthogonal fields of science whom they would not otherwise have met. There is a real need for the scientist turned business entrepreneur who will seek out the best and connect them with others through personalized and trusted introductions. Knowing how important a trend this is helps me to continue this work even in the dead of winter in Canada when travel is not at its easiest.

After ALL I’ve done for them…

How often have we heard those accusatory words? They usually convey a bit of a “moral” disappointment in someone. The attitude is that one has put in some effort and time and done a few things and IMPLICIT in that “giving” is a belief that it should come back to the giver. Now here’s the trouble I have with that. Giving with some unspoken (usually too high) expectation of a return isn’t in fact GIVING; it is INVESTING. I never saw anyone go up to a bank window and say “Here’s some cash. Take it!” One usually goes to a bank to make a deposit in one’s account and the terms of the return are clearly spelled out ahead of time (and are usually believed to be too low by the investor). I suspect that if we spelled out what the expectations were in advance for things we did for people two things would happen: (1) The receiver might not want the favor. The cost to them might just be too high. (2) WE ourselves might not feel so proud and self righteous as we do when we supposedly do “no strings attached” favors for people.

The truth is that GIVING means absolutely NO expectation of any return. The funny part is that such giving where the true reward is the feeling one gets from the act ITSELF usually comes right around and rewards you in ways you never thought of. It is the paradox of life I feel that those who don’t want to be REPAID get REWARDED many fold. The other thing I’d like to put out there while I’m on this topic is that WORK or THINGS don’t buy love and loyalty. ONLY LOVE buys LOVE and only genuine loyalty buys that. We all do things for people we don’t feel the slightest bit of either emotion for but we do it because we have to for one reason or another. Our bosses and co-workers don’t LOVE us or imply everlasting loyalty for us just because we do things with and for them. Its part of the work we do. But when we feel someone genuinely cares about us the ONLY thing we can do to show our appreciation is to reciprocate that feeling. No amount of “doing things” can replace that.

Kublai Khan & Marco Polo

Some time back I heard this very educational tale. This guy called Marco Polo goes to work for an organization - let's call it China. the Big Boss is a guy called Kublai Khan - revered by all, feared by many. After a good tenure Marco Polo gets homesick one day and says to the Boss (who by this time thinks the WORLD of him - and THIS is the part of the story that makes sense even today) " It's been REALLY great working for you in your court but I need to get home."

Kublai takes a flat piece of gold and writes on it "This man, Marco Polo, has my blessings" he signs it with his PERSONAL SEAL. The result? Marco travels cost- and difficulty-free from Beijing to Venice. Everyone he meets looks after him like he was the Boss himself. Why? Because there are two consequences and everyone knows them. If you treat the bearer of such a tablet well, the Boss himself will compensate you tenfold. If you MIStreat such a person the Boss himself will be insulted and will bring death not only to you but to your entire family. Small wonder eh?

Why do I tell this story? Because the same principle works in our everyday lives even today. We all work in organizations and if we somehow have the favor of the Kublai Khan of that organization somehow we tend to succeed more than the next guy and the whole thing becomes a self-fulfilling cycle. If we don't or if we fall OUT of favor we might just as well head for Venice. I have seen the scenario repeat itself in MANY different walks of life and the lesson is always the same. Work to get (and stay) in the best books of the leader of the organization you want to work for or find another organization. I see many young people trying for alternative 3. THERE IS NOT ALTERNATIVE 3 if you need to work for an organization. Oddly enough, it also explains another phenomenon which I have also seen in many places. I call it the "Favor Disease".

Have you ever seen how people react to someone based on their current standing with the Kublai Khan of their organization? If someone is out of favor no one will want to be seen talking to them in the halls or sitting next to them or acknowledging good ideas from them etc etc etc lest they too will come down with the dreaded fatal disease which COULD affect nt ony them personally but also their entire families. Needless to say these folks wither and die away by themselves even if they could have been a great value to their colleagues. If you are in a position of power it behooves you to be conscious about how much YOU can affect the success of others in your organization and therefore of the whole organization itself. In this very competitive world we live in these days it may just make the difference between life and death. Just something to think about. Your thoughts are welcome.

Survivalism versus "Progressivism"

It hit me suddenly. The sheer obviousness of it is quite stunning. Yet I am sure that a lot of us "know" this without ever having explicitly thought about it. There are in fact two major approaches to life. I will call them the "survivalist" approach which simply wants to finish the day with life being as "same" as it can be to the day(s) before. Those folks simply want to end the day without having made a mistake, without having done something that they would regret. To them not doing the wrong thing is preferable to not doing anything. This is their "safe" zone, their comfort zone.

Then there is a different kind of beast altogether. To this person not doing anything is DEATH. To them it is better to have dreamed the big dream and made an effort to get there. To them the worst day is where they made NO progress, took NO risks, and made NO mistakes. they equate mistakes to "experience" and a day spent without gaining any experience is a day lost out of their lives. These are the "Progressivists". Life is no worth LIVING if it is not worth risking. They mouth phrases like "everyone dies... only few people really LIVE!"

Now the sad part. The world is moving at an ever increasing pace. Progress and risk taking is accelerating to the point where just to SURVIVE (the goal of the survivalists) one needs to try new things every day and at ever increasing odds. Does this mean that the survivalists are now on the horns of a very peculiar dilema? To survive they must take risks? What type of person are you? Do you want to make waves and change the world? Are you a romantic? Are you proud that you will retire in the same job you started your career in? Comments welcome.

The "Downsized" Disease

It always leaves me feeling the same way - sad for the state of the human race! All of us who have suffered the trauma of being terminated from a position for whatever reason know exactly what I mean and we have all vowed that WE would never do it to anyone else. I am referring to the contageous disease that society at large seems to think all those who lose their jobs for WHATEVER reason immediately contract. Those who still have a position seem to think that even eye-contact with the victim could immediately mark them too for this terrible affiction. They must all seem to feel that ANY association with people who have recently been "let go" from their organization (even private phone calls or personal e-mails) would be "found" and would mark them for the "kill" next time.

I have always believed in PEOPLE. They don't change suddenly if they are terminated. They are the same human beings that we knew, trusted, had lunch with etc. the day before. Their fate is not so uncommon these days and it could befall ANY of us. There is a wise saying about doing unto others... and I am always reminded of it when I see this behaviour.

I want to believe that this behaviour is the result of "not knowing" what to say and how to act with these folks. There is, on one side, a feeling of relief that it was THEM and not you. At the same time there is the guilty impulse that you don't want to show those feelings. One way to deal with this is to simply understand that YOU had nothing to do with the decision (unless you DID in which case you SHOULD think hard about how you handled the whole situation). I always try the direct approach. I say to the person "I am very sorry for your loss. I know you will bounce back because you are the same fine person today that you were yesterday to me. Let me know what I can do to help you in any way." I have found that this direct approach (of course followed with sincere actions to back up what I have just said) usually works and it cements a bond that is hard to break. The truth is that we will all be in such situations sometime. These moments help us find out the TRUE short list of REAL friends we have. And trust me, those are the friends we will help when their turn comes! The affliction is NOT contageous and it may actually be a good opportunity to make some lasting difference on earth.

The Advertizing Invasion

Yesterday, I listened to an interesting discussion on CBC radio about the "Ad Pollution" that is going on in our society especially in urban settings. There was a lot of back and forth that boiled down to whether there were rights of INDIVIDUALS that superseded the rights of corporations to get their message out there etc. And as I listened to this discussion I was reminded of a recent car trip to Montreal. The trip involved three fillups on the road and, being a slave of convenience and a holder of the speed pass for ESSO I stopped at one of those stations for each of them. By the end I was tired and quite annoyed by the incessant visual and audio bombardment of ads that starts as soon as you take the pump handle in your hand. I thought back to the great days when we could still use those little do-hickies that allowed us to set the gas flowing and walk around the car testing air pressure and washing the windshield etc. Ironically, these devices were considered safe for about FOUR DECADES before they were suddenly too risky to use just around the time when the TVs were installed at the pump. Is there any correlation? Who knows!

After a bit of imprisoned rumination with my hand welded to the pump handle I started to use the time to think of OTHER ways that the advertizing company could achieve its own purpose without intruding so openly and aggressively on my "quiet time". Wouldn't it be nice, in these days of ever rising gas prices, if you pumped your gas in relative silence and at your own pace and then when that receipt came out it had, printed on it, something like " Thank you for using ESSO. Your tatal bill WOULD HAVE BEEN ___ (fill in a huge and ever increasing number here) but our sponsors (say CADBURY for example) have reduced that by $___ (fill in the cost of advertizing via those infernal TVs) as a token of their appreciation. have a GREAT day!" I think I would rush in to the shop and BUY a Carburys chocolate bar right away. I would do this for several reasons: first I would be thinking of one right at the time I could go in and DO something about it, and second I would FEEL like doing something back for the company that had just reduced my gas bill AND given me some peace at the same time! And after all the cost of the chocolate would be covered by my savings in the gas bill! Who knew that lurking inside me was an advertizing "expert"? Of course I could just switch to another chain that did not (yet) have those TV infomercial machines installed at the pump. That would be quicker and more effective.