Out of the Box Mentoring in the Experience Economy

It’s your first day on a new job. You’re super excited. You’re full of ideas, hope, expectations, and visions of all you will achieve in your new role. You loved everyone you met during the interviews. They seem easy to work with, motivated, and extremely talented.

After a few weeks or months, though, you find yourself questioning everything. Suddenly that grass that looked greener before you started is starting to look pretty brown. That company culture that looked amazing all the sudden seems toxic. The coworkers you thought were brilliant now frustrate you to no end. The team you were excited to lead, now seem incompetent. Most importantly, your effectiveness and results end up being far less than you envisioned.

What happened, and more importantly why did it happen?

I have observed 3 distinct reasons that new, excited, motivated employees do a complete 180 a few weeks or months into the job. Understanding these reasons is key to becoming an effective mentor and leader.

Self Deception and “The Box”

The first and most fundamental problem is that it is human nature to become self-deceived and to start viewing those around us as objects or tools to do our bidding as opposed to people with thoughts, desires, needs, and ambitions every bit as valid as our own. In their book, “Leadership and Self Deception”, The Arbinger Institute calls this state of being “In the box”. It’s like there’s a wall around us distorting our view of those around us. I would highly recommend reading this book, but I will summarize some of the key points below:

• When we have a feeling that we should do something for someone else, and we ignore it, we enter a state of justification called “self-betrayal”.
• When we betray ourselves we enter “the box” and start inflating our own virtues and inflating the shortcomings of others which causes us to see them as objects and ourselves as the only important one.
• When in the box, we need others to mess up to justify our inflation of their shortcomings. This is reciprocated and we collude with each other in a downword spiral of blame.
• This blame makes it nearly impossible to achieve results as feeding our justification ends up mattering more than achieving results (contrary to what we would claim in this state).
• We get “out of the box” when we view others as people and look for ways to empathize with and help them. All that matters in this state are the results for the user. It’s outward focused as opposed to inwardly focused.
• We stay out of the box when we consistently consider the needs of others and look for ways we can help them achieve their goals as well as ask for their help in achieving ours.

Performance Review Models are Broken

The employer/employee relationship at most companies is based on a dishonest dialogue. This is leftover from an era where lifetime employment was expected and in return, fierce loyalty to employees was given in the form of pensions, promotions, etc. Employers committed to employees for decades and expected the same in return. Due to this expectation of loyalty, the mentality was that employees lived to contribute to the whole. Personal goals, aspirations, etc were secondary. In return, promotions or “working your way up the ladder” were given.

We see many leftover relics of this age such as:

• Employees fear to be honest with their employers about their goals and when their role is not helping them meet their goals
• Employers delude themselves into believing their employees will be with the company for decades.
• The needs of the company outweigh the needs of the employee
• Traditional performance reviews most often are goals being delivered from a manager to employees down from on high. Then once a year, the manager passes judgement on how the employee did and gives them their just reward.

The problem is, not only is this “needs of the whole out weigh needs of the individual” mentality ineffective and demotivating, but it’s flat out unrealistic in today’s experience economy.

Pensions don’t exist anymore. Many companies are afraid to invest in their employees because they don’t want to train a competitors future hire. Employees (especially talented ones) have many choices in today’s job market. Layoffs are a frequent reality, and barrier to entry for new startups in extremely low.

All of this means that the age-old traditional method of mentoring and evaluating performance just simply doesn’t work anymore.

Rigidity and Inconsistency

The final problem is that there are two extremes that plague most businesses’ performance reviews and mentoring sessions.

On the one hand, most companies try to standardize reviews so much that all employees are evaluated on the same criteria (often time the company’s “core values”). Yet what makes a great accountant, designer, developer, and trainer are completely different. If you try to rate all employees on the same scale it’s much like building a one-size-fits-all software product. What you end up with is “meh” for everyone. The least common denominators are so vague that you give up effectiveness.

On the other hand, you have to be fair (equal opportunity, etc). You also can’t be inconsistent. One designer can’t be evaluated differently from another designer. There has to be some standard that employees are held to. So we need consistency but flexibility.

The Solution

Ok, enough about the problems. We’ve kind of hammered those to death. How do we fix this mess?

I have found that there are three key things you can do that solve all these problems and more:

1. Establish Tours of Duty (or a mutually beneficial “mission” for the employee to complete) with employees that are renegotiated upon completion.
2. Together with your team, establish a list of principles you and your team will hold yourselves to. These create a common vocabulary and focus that can scale from individuals, to teams, or entire design studios.
3. Structure performance reviews and weekly mentoring sessions around progress on the employee’s Tour of Duty milestones and progress made on goals set based on the department principles that need work.

Tours of Duty

A “Tour of Duty” is really nothing more than a mutually beneficial mission the employee will embark on. An effective tour of duty should benefit the company in some distinct, measurable way and should also help the employee achieve their career goals, acquire a new skill or desired experience.

The main components of a Tour of Duty include:

• What is the mission objective?
• What does success look like for the company?
• What does success look like for the employee?
• What is the anticipated length of the Tour of Duty?
• Statement of aspirations & values of company.
• Statement of aspirations and values of employee.

For example, with one of my team members I set up the following Tour of Duty (some details removed to protect privacy):

• Objectives: A) Transform [name of client company]’s view of our company from production house to business partner and B) Get user research happening on [team name] on a weekly cadence.
• Expected duration: 1–2 years.
• Success for company: A) Generative and/or evaluative user research has happened weekly for 1 full quarter. B) Identify 2 epics worth of improvements to [name of client company]’s product, propose it to them, have it accepted, and complete it (design & dev). C) Cross-functional team has participated in brainstorming and research for 1 full quarter.
• Success for employee: A) Achieve senior-level competency in the following areas: Strategy, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Prototyping, User Research, and Motion Design. B) Thoughtful animations have been incorporated into the product to enhance usability.
• List of company values/priorities.
• List of employee values/priorities.

Another key to this whole Tour of Duty thing is a few months before the Tour of Duty ends start having the conversation with the employee on what’s next. If you’ve really done your work to understand their career goals, you should have a pretty good idea but it’s important to have the conversation. Do they want to sign up for another tour of duty on the same team they’re on? Do they want to move teams? Do they (and this is a hard but vital one) want to transition to another company altogether?

If the next goal they have for their career can’t be fulfilled at your company, that’s totally ok. It’s important to have that trust to be able to have that conversation. In fact, that gives you the ability to help them find their next Tour at a company that WILL be able to help them achieve their goal. Because you were honest and open with each other about it, the mutual relationship of trust is maintained. This is VITAL as maintaining that relationship will allow you to stay in touch and utilize them as a future source of information and referrals in the future.

In fact, as Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh point out in their book, “The Alliance”:

Lifetime employment might be over, but a lifetime relationship remains the ideal, and…can be extremely valuable. When a company is thriving, it’s alumni look good. Meanwhile, when a company’s alumni are thriving professionally, that network becomes a valuable asset that helps the company.

Leadership “Ethos” or Principles

Having a leadership “Ethos” establishes a scalable, consistent, equal way of evaluating and coaching employees while still providing important distinctions across department lines. For example, a “development ethos” would be different from a “design ethos” which would be different from a “accounting ethos”. This makes sense because what makes a great designer varies from those other disciplines. There can be consistencies, but there should also be differences.

All members of the department should have a say when you create the principles so that everyone is willing to be accountable. This provides a platform that will help you coach and set goals with individuals, teams, and even entire design studios in various locations.

By way of example here is my personal creative ethos:

Learn

COMFORT IS THE ENEMY OF GREATNESS
Great solutions have a shelf life. I always ask ‘why’ and challenge myself to constantly learn & take my game to the next level.

YOU ARE NOT THE USER
I never assume that I am the user. I test and validate assumptions with actual users. They are the ‘experts’.

YEARN TO LEARN
There is always more to learn. I will never stop seeking knowledge and developing new skills.

Collaborate

DESIGN IS A TEAM SPORT
My team works collaboratively and doesn’t tolerate superstars. Everyone has a voice and is accountable for the results.

EXPERIMENTS, NOT DEBATES
I build experiments and ‘get out of the building’ with them. I value validating ideas over debating assumptions.

OUTCOMES, NOT OUTPUT
I measure progress in outcomes rather than output, and deliver problems to be solved to my team rather than solutions to be implemented.

Ideate

NO ONE-HIT WONDERS
No one ever gets design right the first time. I explore multiple ideas before choosing a direction.

NO COVER BANDS
A cover band never changed the world. I push & empower teams to create innovative ideas rather than copy others’ work.

BUILD SKATEBOARDS, NOT CAR FRAMES
My teams release small-batch-size solutions often, rather than working for months on the ‘perfect’ solution before releasing and validating.

Craft

EVERYTHING IS YOUR JOB
No one is above anything. We all do whatever is necessary to ship products that improve our users’ lives.

EMBRACE THE ‘FOUNDER MINDSET’
I am invested in helping the company succeed just as much as if I were it’s founder. I focus, understand the business and solve problems without being asked.

DESIGN IS HARD WORK
Creative problem-solving is not for the faint of heart. I put in the work necessary to get the job done and take accountability for my results. No two designers approach the same problem the same way, and I respect that. What is important is the result, not the journey.

Lead

OWNERSHIP, NOT LEASHES
I hire those I trust, and trust those I hire. I create a culture of empowerment and accountability. I coach, but don’t mandate or micro-manage.

SKATE TO WHERE THE PUCK WILL BE
I treat team members as if they already posses the attributes I want them to develop. This allows everyone to grow and realize their true potential.

RESPECTFUL AND CONFIDENT, NOT DELICATE
Breakthroughs happen when the team takes risks, trusts their instincts and speaks their mind — not when they tiptoe around each other.

Balance

SHARPEN THE SAW
A sharp saw gets dull over time. Creatives are no different. I create a culture where taking time off to recharge is expected not just tolerated.

EXPERIENCE GREAT DESIGN
I expect my teams to seek out and experience great design so we all understand where the bar is that we need to surpass to create the future.

WORK SMART
I create teams that understand that true success is working smarter, not longer and are skilled at prioritization, focus, and time management.

Out of the Box Reviews and Mentoring

After you have established a Tour of Duty and Department Ethos, then it’s time for the real work. Have each employee rate themselves (and rate you) on where they feel they stand on each principle in the Department Ethos. You should then do the same for them. If desired, you can also have coworkers rate them on each principle. I also like to include a comment section on the Google Form survey I use for each main section (Learn, Collaborate, etc). I do this per main section as it would get far too lengthy to do per principle.

Then I calculate an average score for each main section and ultimately roll up all main section scores to a final average score. All ratings are based on a 4-point scale of: Outstanding, Solid, Needs Improvement, and Unacceptable. I then factor in progress towards milestone goals from their Tour of Duty for a final evaluation score. We then make goals together for the next quarter for both Tour of Duty milestones and Design Ethos improvements.

During my weekly coaching sessions with each employee I use these goals as the subject matter and help them progress towards their goals. I also use it as a time to understand their career goals, answer any questions they have, and provide general guidance.

Conclusion

I have found that taking the time to understand employees career goals, structuring evaluation and feedback around mutually beneficial missions, and establishing a clear departmental standard help me stay out of the box towards employees. I see them clearly as people rather than objects.

As I focus on helping them achieve their goals, they in turn are motivated to help the company achieve ours. We end up “colluding” together to achieve results. If little disagreements or frustrations arise, they are soon forgotten because we don’t need blame to feed our justification.

The other ironic thing is that by calling out the elephant in the room and having open, honest conversations about each employees career goals (even when that necessitates a transition to another company), employee retention actually increases.

Mentoring “out of the box” really is the only way to mentor in the experience economy. Anything else leads to turnover, bad feelings, and inefficient results.

Have something to add? Connect with me on LinkedIn to join the conversation or check out my portfolio to learn more about my work.