Mentoring symposium.

Having recently attended the Inter – CEP Symposium for mentoring, I came  away more confused than I am normally! Wanting to glean new thinking, new concepts and to hear from thought leaders on the ever developing and growing mentor landscape I unfortunately didn’t see or hear anything new. The business mentoring and advisory industry is growing extremely fast, without any real governance and performance measurement principles. Even the panelists disagreed with certain key issues around mentoring services eg: should mentors be paid? Francis and I co-founded Business Propeller with a view to change and shake up the staid, tired and boring mentoring sector. In my experience mentors tend to be retired senior corporates, who have little understanding of being nimble creative and innovative, very good at time and motion studies, but not relevant in today’s fast moving environment. I chatted to one mentor at the symposium who didn’t have any understanding of sales and marketing tactics employed by SME’s, when we discussed digital and social media strategies, they completely glazed over! What we all did agree on, was that mentoring really helps drive the success of businesses, so what really begs the question is; Why did the Government recently axe the Growth Accelerator programme? All of our mentors (paid) are entrepreneurs who understand how to; start, grow and exit profitable businesses, which sets Business Propeller.Org apart from the plethora of mentoring organisations that operate in the UK.