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"Welcome to the mainframe. Go figure out what your job is and make yourself useful."

I don't know about you, but I'd be very nervous about doing business with any organization that took that attitude to their most business-critical IT platform. Fortunately, this is not what you can expect at production-quality mainframe environments.

Rather, the average experienced mainframer that I've met has had years of learning, guidance, experience and mentoring before they could be expected to take the lead on managing the mainframe.   

However, as I've often observed, today we're entering a new generation where new people need to be effective right away as the current generation moves on, so it's necessary to speed things up a bit.  And we can't afford the risk of a casual, ad hoc method of training people.

That's certainly a key reason behind the creation of CA's Mainframe 2.0 strategy, with our Mainframe Software Manager and other "watch-this-space" innovations that will complement it.

None of which changes the fact that there is still great value to be had from mentoring, enabling new people to become conversant with more than just the technology, to learn the culture and local manifestations and approaches to managing business IT.

So, the question is: how can we effectively mentor a new generation of mainframers?

That's a question I posed to Denise Kalm, a CA colleague of mine, prolific author, member of the CMG Board (among many other qualifications), executive coach and someone who has done a great deal of thinking about mentoring.

Rather than giving you my version of her response, I thought it might be worthwhile instead to hand this particular blog entry over to her at this point and let her do a "guest blog" about this important topic.

So, Denise, what are your thoughts about mentoring a new generation on the mainframe?

Too often, mentoring is something that is either so formalized that it doesn't work effectively, or left to the individual to manage.  Neither approach is optimal.  Given the value of getting all employees up to speed as quickly as possible, it is critical that senior management backing be in place, which means making the mentoring role a part of all experienced employees' performance plans.  New employees should be offered an assigned mentor as soon as they get on board, but they should also have access to a database of mentors. This database would list names, contact information and areas of expertise, so that as the newbie progresses, they can seek out short-term or long-term mentoring relationships in the areas they need to grow.  Mentoring should be fluid - as much or as little as the employee needs, when they need it.  The assigned mentor can assist with making a learning plan, so that the new employee makes progress at a reasonable pace, taking into account the experience and knowledge they already have.  Protégés should also have a defined performance plan requiring them to exploit these resources.  Too often, "techies" can fail to seek out help, either from a case of ego or from natural introversion.  And they may not know what they don't know.  So both the mentor and protégé should have incentives to embrace the mentoring relationship.

The one thing most mentoring programs lack is a basic understanding of the mutual benefits of the relationship.  It is not simply a one-way brain dump from the expert to the novice, but it is often assumed that this is all that is possible.  A mentoring relationship should be a synergy of minds, an opportunity for both members of the alliance to benefit, which translates to benefits to the company.  How would this work?  A new employee is not a tabula rasa (blank slate) - they come with a wealth of experience and knowledge. And though it might not be mainframe expertise, it is expertise nonetheless.  They bring a different world view and lens to view problems and challenges; when matched with another person with their own world view, this translates to increased innovation and creativity.  This is the true value of "diversity;" bringing together different approaches, different styles and different minds to a problem.  In this way, the mentor also benefits greatly by having access to a wider range of solutions and ideas.  The company benefits because innovation is the key to success. 

Designing a successful alliance is a subject for another place, but it is fundamental to making this relationship be transformative for both parties.