FAQs for Mentors of SPJIMR's Executive MBA Program

 Mentors have 4 tasks

• Monitoring the assignments of the mentees
• Seeing "End of contact" feedback forms from your mentees 
• Send in your quarterly report
• Helping in the Projects of the mentees 

MONITORING THE ASSIGNMENTS

 How much time I need to spend in mentoring? How?

Your main help is needed in tracking your mentee's timeliness and quality of assignments and we earnestly suggest you set up a time table of monthly one hour meetings with your mentee where you review 

1. The status of assignment submissions in the previous month
• how many were to be submitted ? 
• how many were actually submitted ? 
• how many of these were submitted in time?
2. Do they have any difficulties in the next month assignments ?

What supports are available to your mentees for solving the assignments ?

Please note that during the "off campus" period of 12 weeks your mentee gets about 18-22 assignments : approximately 2 assignments per week. According to the principles of adult learning (in the same blog there is a separate post) the adults learn best when the onus of study, search, research and reading rests with them (the mentees). 

For doing the assignment, apart from the what we teach during their "on campus" time period of 9 days - and apart from  the text books and the handbooks that are given to them on campus - other sources of support your mentees can tap are search on the internet, peer interaction with other functions of the company, discussions with stakeholders and direct market observations.
 

How can you help your mentee in assignments in subjects you are not expert in ?

We are aware that you - the mentor - are not necessarily an expert in all fields and you may not be able to provide academic guidance to the mentee in each and every subject. Your role as a mentor   is more to be a counselor - and act as an "interested parent" and "coach" - and provide the mentee with your contacts within and outside the organization.

SEEING "END OF CONTACT" FEEDBACK FORM

During the round-up session conducted by us on the campus, we take a feedback from each person - your mentee included -  on "what things did they learn during the contact which you can apply in your own company?" . These forms are sent to your HR with a request that they be sent to the respective mentors. When you receive these forms, it is a god opportunity for you to capitalize on that information and see if you can let your mentee practice it inside the company.

SEND IN YOUR QUARTERLY REPORT
Every quarter when your mentee comes to the campus, s/he is supposed to bring along a quarterly report from you in the standard template. Much of the factual information for filling the form comes from your mentee. You need to only validate his assignment submission status and give us your opinion whether there are signs that the  mentee is developing. This should not take more than 15 minutes every quarter. It is compulsory for your mentee to bring the filled form (hard copy) when s/he comes to the campus for a contact.

HELPING IN THE PROJECTS OF THE MENTEES

 What is a "Project"?

 The project is worth 7.5 credits out of the 49 credits for the whole course and is therefore the single most important element is your mentee's overall passing and scoring. In a way, it is an "internal consulting" project - wherein your mentee assumes the role of an internal consultant and addresses your real business issues. You can take advantage of this importance and ask your mentee to do a project which is useful to your business. A project is almost like a "Mini Ph D" and goes through a well defined structure and flow of milestones as follows.

 Why is there a  "Project"?

 The project is given so that your mentee understands how to define and solve an original problem in an original fashion. Afterall every problem in life is not in the book and managers are required to solve such original problems many times. The project teaches them a systematic method of approaching such situations. It a way of learning how to learn.

 Everything is not a  "Project"

It frequently happens that what a company considers to be a project may not be acceptable as a project for our course for the simple reason that most of the projects that your company is pursuing may be large projects involving many people and needing periods longer than a year to complete. The project that we expect is an individual project and it needs to be completed in a matter of 4-5 months. It needs to be a "bite sized" project which can be completed in about 200 hours by the participant including planning, meetings, secondary research, primary work, tabulations, conclusions, report writing and viva voce.

Criteria for calling it a "Project"

A project is expected to have the following characteristics in its "title" itself.

• it should be linked to a real and significant business issue of the company
• it should aim to arrive at recommendations towards a specific SMART purpose.
• It should involve some original / field work aimed at finding / uncovering something relevant

Stages of aProject

A project goes through major stages of (a) Proposal (b) Primary Work (c) Conclusion and Report. Major milestones under each of these 3 are as follows. The mentor is expected to know the status of milestones and help and guide the mentee in achieving quality as well as timeliness of these milestones. The mentor is also expected to be present for both the proposal defense stage and Viva stage ... yellow highlights below.

1. PROPOSAL : Draft, Revised Draft, Proposal Defense Meeting, Finalized Proposal
2. PRIMARY WORK :  Field work consists of secondary and primary work and is defined at the proposal stage in terms of various chapters.
3. CONCLUSIONS AND REPORT : Tabulation, Interpretation, conclusions, draft report, Viva and final report