Finding the Right Mentors

Launchspace Talentz teams are running into the third Sprint in their projects. It is exciting for me to see the Talentz teams gaining experience with real-world business processes and challenges. 

In the last two sprints, Talentz have been growing their skills in collaborating with customer and other stakeholders, performing technical research, and applying design thinking, agile and project management practices to ensure they do the right things and do things right. We did not leave the Talentz teams to take on these real-world challenges without support. Like any leading organisations and successful individuals have identified, having a mentor is critical to their successes.  In the Launchspace Programme, project team mentors are carefully handpicked for the best outcome. 

How We Find Mentors

Here is the process we went through to find just the right mentors.

1. We started with clear goals in mind. It is critical to define what we want to get out of a mentorship so that we find the mentor with the appropriate skillsets and experience.  The clarity of your goal is a key success factor – the clearer you know what you want, the more you will get out of a mentoring relationship. In the case of Launchspace project teams, it is to ensure that mentors bring the best out of the Talentz, and to guide Talentz teams to deliver successful projects for our partners.
2. We then identified potential mentors who have the right mindset and skillsets to help. While it is great to find someone you know who has been there and done that, often it is worth exploring your network to find people with the perfect fit. For example, a Talentz team works on the Robotics Automation project for 2degrees. While any senior developer may be able to mentor for the project team, I asked around at Datacom and discovered the Robotics Automation team, who are more than happy to lend us their (robotic) hands!
3. We established expectations and protocol of communication. It is worth spending time up front to think about what you want mentors to help with, how you are going to communicate (e.g. Skype, face-to-face, emails), how often you communicate with each other, so that your mentors know what you want from them. Again, the clearer you can articulate these items, the easier it is for your mentors to provide value to you. At Launchspace, we went to the extent of creating a written document to send to all mentors so that everyone is on the same page.
4. We approached mentors as early as possible. Mentors are usually successful people in their own fields with a very busy schedule. Once we identified the mentors we need, we gave them notice as early as possible so that we get considered before other priorities fill up their calendars. 
5. We recognise that mentorship is a two-way exchange. While we are clear about what mentors can do for us, we can also find ways to contribute to the mentors. It is easy to assume people who are successful will not need anything from us.  However, while mentors excel at their own trade, there are other areas they may be interested in progressing. These could range from baking a delicious cake to promoting their business to a certain group.  Find out what they are and provide assistance where you can will enrich your mentor partnership.

The Results - A Great Team of Mentors

Having talked about how we found the right mentors, you also get to see the results. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the mentors for the Talentz teams.

Sarah Clearwater is the perfect fit as the mentor for the Datacom Conversational UI project team to work on this design-thinking-oriented project. Sarah is the founding director of Reframr, a bespoke design agency putting human experiences at the heart of business.  She is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), mentoring designers and entrepreneurs passionate about Human Business and speaks on customer centricity and people-led innovation.

Mark Ashcroft is working for Datacom as the Group Enterprise Architect to assist with the transformation of internal services and architecture across their global operations.  As a highly experienced technology leader who is passionate about delivering tangible outcomes for business, Mark mentors the NZTE Peer-to-Peer Automation project team in consulting, building strategic roadmaps and prototyping concepts to help New Zealand exporters.

Pradeep Kulatunga mentors the Foodstuffs eCommerce Analytics project team over business aspects.  Once a seasoned software engineer, Pradeep is now a Business Unit Manager at Datacom leading a team of talented software engineers who search for the most complex of problems in the enterprise space and create solutions that please customers and delights engineers.  

Jason Goodsell, Software Developer of the Mobile Innovation team at Datacom, is the technical mentor for the Foodstuffs eCommerce Analytics project team. Jason has been working with Launchspace to coach Talentz on topics relating to software development. He is also an organiser of the Microsoft Student Accelerator programme.

Dr Lisa Henley, co-founder and Data Scientist at Stats Geeks, is an expert mentor for Jumpshift Predictive Analytics project team. For the last 20 years she has worked a range of analytical roles in NZ, Australia, England and the Netherlands. If you want to know the secret to a happy life, Lisa has some answers in her PhD in Computational and Applied Mathematics “The Quantification and Visualisation of Human Flourishing”!

Mudit Marwah, Principal Analytics Consultant and Big Data Advisor, mentors the Jumpshift Predictive Analytics project team. He has more than 10 years of experience helping his clients with strategy, architecture, leading and implementing solutions for blue chip companies across UK, India and US around Business Intelligence, Big Data, Analytics, Data Science, Machine Learning and Modern Data Platforms. Mudit is a Microsoft Certified Solution Expert in Data Management and Analytics. 

Jeff Leddra, Analytics Lead for the Auckland BI and Analytics Team at Datacom, mentors the Jumpshift Predictive Analytics project team. He works with clients on Advanced Analytics projects, such as Promotion ROIs, the risk of student dropout and basket analysis, using Machine Learning and R. He has many years of experience as developer and business analyst in NZ, Australia, and London on data warehousing and dash-boarding projects.

Derek Best, the Practice Manager of Robotic Automation (RPA) practice at Datacom, mentors the 2degrees RPA project team. He leads his practice to deliver attended and unattended software robots that deliver speed, efficiency and accuracy to businesses. Derek has 20 years’ experience in delivering interactive & online solutions for large organisations with a strong focus on the technical design and delivery. 

Vinil Gopalakrishnan, Robotic Process Automation Architect at Datacom, mentors the 2degrees RPA project team. He provides the Solution designing, Consulting and programs automation solutions for Datacom clients. Before joining Datacom, Vinil has spent 12 years working for EY, Xerox at Singapore and India. Apart from working on robotic process automation he has experience in IT process automation, process reengineering and IT operations.

Over the last 2 sprints we already saw tremendous value the mentors have been providing to the project teams. I would like to thank all the mentors for investing their precious time to support the development of Talentz.