The relationships between people in business are what determine its effectiveness, culture, and success. I propose a corporate apprenticeship that uses human understanding to create meaningful context by developing one-on-one relationships based on intrinsically motivated career development aspirations of employees that are mentored through with emotional intelligence and systems thinking.

Problem

In today’s business culture rising to the top in a linear progression is the norm of advancement. This does not encourage people to develop based on their interests but on the cultural norm of advancement. By not inspiring experimentation and flexibility, our current system of education and career progression has trapped many employees in roles that are not intrinsically motivating, which decreases effectiveness, profits, innovation, and happiness. Ultimately, the meaning of a person’s work is developed through role experimentation and healthy human relationships, which is typically not fostered in a corporate setting. So how can an organization help people find meaning in their work?

Solution

In the skilled trades an apprenticeship model (mentor/protégé) is used to educate and employ people. It uses real-life experience to promote a deep understanding of the expectations and environment of work by transferring explicit and tacit knowledge. By coupling a three-tiered apprenticeship model with non-linear self-directed career paths, mentoring, emotional intelligence, and systems thinking an organization can create an environment that will increase the probability of people finding meaning in their work and therefore create a healthy human-centric place to work. The underlying concept is to use self-similarity in a simple recursive design to meet the complex demands, so the protégé becomes the mentor and so on. Two people, one relationship, infinite paths.

Three tiers of the model:

Shadowing: A “try before you buy” introduction to a new role. It could simply be sitting with a mentor a few times in the role that holds some interest for the potential protégé for a few hours at each session while the mentor does their work while the other person asks questions about the role. There is no commitment at this stage.

Apprenticing: If the protégé likes the new role a formal process of expectations and education begins between the mentor and protégé. The protégé still keeps their current role and meets with the mentor twice a month for apprenticing. This stage requires a minimum six month commitment. The tangible work is a medium used to transfer emotional intelligence and systems thinking concepts and practices while the mentor helps the protégé find meaning in the potential role.

Journeying: The mentor and protégé agree together when the protégé is ready to complete projects on their own with mentor review prior to submission. At this stage the mentor gains a functional assistant and the protégé gains true work experience in that role.

Please note that a mentor is not necessarily above a protégé on the org. chart. An executive is allowed and encouraged to be a protégé of a line employee.

Practical Impact

An apprenticeship model produces tangible work products while allowing a person to experiment with a new career path that may be up, sideways, or even downward. It also transfers tacit knowledge throughout an organization by the use of social networking guided by emotional intelligence. This encourages tough debate and honest dialogue in a one-on-one format which increases trust, career satisfaction, self-awareness, customer awareness, affective commitment, talent capacity, leadership capacity, job performance, internal job promotion rate, and decreases turnover. It also short-circuits the stalemate of advancement, the “I can’t get the job because I don’t have any experience, yet can’t get the experience because I can’t get the job” syndrome. Beyond an individual’s career advancement this model can be used as a knowledge management technique and leadership platform to transfer all kinds of development and cultural visions from the bottom-up and from the top-down.

First Steps

After a few one-on-ones with key executives the cultural acceptance level can be assessed. If it is accepted, a formalized process that uses strong evidence-based and experimentation methods to design the support system increases the chance of a successful implementation. By also using a system with feedback mechanisms ensures an ever changing process that adapts to current needs and desires of the participants. It is suggested that a grassroots movement be used to implement the process which verifies the culture wants it and will not be forced onto the employees. A six month pilot program could be used to iron out cultural kinks. Here is a sampling of some deliverables.

Organizational assessment
Design assessment
Resource assessment
Recruit 20-30 participants.
Define participant qualifications.
Define implementation strategy.
Recruit participants.
Train participants.
Measure intangible value such as emotional intelligence and systems thinking.
Measure leadership capacity in mentors and protégés.
Measure economic impact of program.
Measure participant designed criteria: Focus inventory, one-on-one interviews.

Credits

Major references used in research:

Peter Senge, Daniel Goleman, Chris Argyris, Linda Holbeche, Alfie Kohn, Dorthy Leonard, and Walter Swap.

(See references in "Corporate Apprenticeship Research" PDF in Helpful Materials section for all references.)

Documents

Corporate Apprenticeship Research.pdf

Corporate Apprenticeship Presentation_v2.pptx

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July 22, 2010 at 8:19am

Matt Shlosberg

This reminds me of the Guild Hall Model I studied in the University of Notre Dame's leadership program. The approach was pretty similar. They talk about developmental stages: Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, and Master and they tell you how to work with people depending on their stage of development. I recommend you look at the model to see how your ideas can improve upon it.

August 13, 2010 at 11:35am

Raj Kumar

Hello Scott,

In quite a few family businesses I know of the new family entrants are broken-in in the manner detailed. They are the silver spoon guys. It will be wonderful if this can be a career model but I have my doubts whether a professional will treat a novice with the care and affection this approach demands. However, the key point in the learning process here is the dialogue the novice engages in and the access to experts. I believe the reason this dialogue is not practiced today despite agreement on its virtues is the great demand it places on the time and energy of busy administrators. I have succeeded in developing a way to assure the time, energy and volition for dialogue. My purpose was not one-on-one learning of the kind envisaged by you but I expect it will spread the benefit of your hack for career development.

Regards,

Raj Kumar

September 16, 2016 at 10:19pm

Jason Tyler

Career development is definitely a crucial part of our life; therefore, we should try to improve our career skills and success strategies. But due to lack of proper sources and confidence level, we should get a chance to develop our career goals. Here this article also describes some hidden facts about career goals. Thanks for such wonderful article.
https://www.certifiedcoaches.com/blog/career-coach-always-room-grow/