Too Old to Learn?

C.J. loved Law and Order. He seldom had time to watch TV anymore, but when he did, he wanted something unsentimental. As a rerun of the show came on, he settled into the taupe leather sofa in the living room and adjusted his glasses. Just then, the phone rang. Even now that he was CEO of Armor Coat Insurance, the Providence, Rhode Island-based property and casualty insurance company that he had inherited from his father, there was still one thing that C.J. could not do—let a phone go unanswered. Not even on a Sunday night. He sighed and picked up the receiver. “C.J.? I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” The voice at the other end of the line was angry and intense, and C.J. knew instantly that it belonged to Ed McGlynn, the company’s star salesman. Ed had been named top performer six of the last ten years and had pulled in most of Armor Coat’s major accounts. Customers loved him. At 52, he was still the magnetic and popular hockey hero that he had been at Notre Dame. He took his major clients sailing on weekends and played golf with them during the week. Whenever he recounted his triumphs, Ed would brag about how more than 300 of Armor Coat’s customers had sent him get-well cards after he’d had his appendix out. Now, on the phone, Ed was clearly upset. “I’ve been with this company 23 years, and I’ve given it everything I’ve got,” he fumed. “But if you don’t get rid of that SOB you sicced on me, I’m out of here. Those Internet guys don’t speak the same language we do. They’re arrogant. They lack respect. They don’t have the same values. And I’ll tell you, C.J., I’m not just some stupid salesman who’s going to sit back while some baby-faced know-it-all squeezes the life out of me.” New Tricks of the Trade The know-it-all was Roger Sterling, the 28-year-old Web guru that C.J. had hired last year to be the director of electronic commerce at Armor Coat—and the mentor that C.J. had assigned to work with Ed on his computer skills. With his entrepreneurial flair, and a monomaniacal focus on business, Roger seemed typical of the breed of software engineers that flourished in Silicon Valley. He had studied math at Cal Tech for a year and was second in his class before he dropped out to join a $ 20 million start-up. Born with a sense of entitlement and a conviction that the rest of the world was irrelevant, Roger had a reputation for his technological savvy—and for his nonexistent people skills. After the IPO, he was not only richer but also brasher than before. Roger took the job at Armor Coat only because he was convinced that the insurance industry was ripe for an e-commerce revolution. Insurance was, after all, a product that consisted purely of information and money. Already, he understood the possibilities of the Internet the way few people in the insurance industry did. For him, it was simply a game to push the technology to its limits—without regard for the people who would use it. When C.J. approached him about restructuring a national program to sell insurance directly to customers on the Web, Roger knew exactly what the potential was: “We can eliminate about 2,000 agents. It’s a license to print money.” The odd thing was, Roger had a hard time understanding why some people might object to a cavalier attitude like his. C.J. chalked it up to generational differences. If Roger had emotions, he hid them well—so well that the senior salespeople called him “Pac Man.” His robotic reputation was only reinforced by the fact that he didn’t seem to have any outside interests. He didn’t play sports, he didn’t fish—he didn’t seem to do anything but drive to and from work in his BMW convertible. “Yes, if I could invite only one of the men to my club, it would definitely be Ed,” C.J. said to himself. And now Ed’s ego clearly needed massaging. C.J. sympathized with his star salesman—he himself knew little about computers. But at the same time, he realized there was no going back to the predigital age. Armor Coat had to move into the Web era or it would die. Legacy of Change Indeed, change had been the norm at the French-Canadian company that the Albert family had founded as a four-man operation in 1879. Since then, Armor Coat was where all the Albert men had cut their teeth. A few old hands still remembered C.J.’s legendary grandfather Anatole, who had run the company with an iron fist. But it was C.J.’s father who had done the most to make the company what it was today: a nationally recognized corporation with offices in 32 states. By the time C.J. took the helm in the late 1980s, Armor Coat’s sales and profits were skyrocketing. The company finally went public in 1996. The IPO had made the Albert family extremely rich—C.J. himself was a millionaire many times over. Still in the afterglow, C.J. knew that the family and other shareholders trusted him to keep things on track. That meant staying devoted to the customer and keeping costs down. The latter was especially challenging given that many traditional insurance firms were considering going on-line. Internet-only start-ups had already discovered cheaper, more efficient ways to replace the ingrained and expensive agent networks, and C.J. knew that Armor Coat could ignore this option only at its peril. Yet no company to date had found a way to overcome the customer’s desire for human contact. It was understandable that people might not want to buy insurance—a product often associated with death and disaster—through an impersonal intermediary such as a computer. The challenge, as C.J. saw it, was to find a way to make the digital product friendly and unintimidating. To do that, he reckoned, Armor Coat needed to draw on both Ed’s strengths (solid customer relationships) and Roger’s (cutting-edge technology). The older generation and the new needed to come together to make this work. Armor Coat needed to draw on Ed’s strength in customer relations and on Roger’s strength in cutting-edge technology. That wasn’t going to be easy. There’d been tension between the company’s salespeople and Roger’s department right from the start. Internet experts didn’t come cheap. In fact, C.J. had to offer them salaries that were equal to the money being paid to sales agents who had already been in the field for 15 or 20 years. It was inevitable that those agents would resent the “overpaid” new-comers. C.J. also decided that the new Web designers would report directly to Roger. C.J. realized that Roger’s management position could stir angry feelings among the salespeople and concerns about company priorities. But he knew the new technology recruits would need lots of support and responsibility if the transformation was really going to work. All that was bad enough, but then C.J. fired 10 % of the sales force to cut costs. The reaction was severe: the survivors felt betrayed. The salespeople blamed the Web designers for the organizational grenade that had been tossed into their midst. Who’s in Charge? C.J. had hung up the phone and was sitting on the sofa, deep in thought. His wife Karen walked into the living room, noticed that the TV was on mute, and read her husband’s expression. “What’s wrong?” she asked. Karen was a child psychologist and the mother of their two children, Annie and Simon. C.J. and Karen had been married almost 25 years, and she knew everything there was to know about him and the business. “Things are coming unglued,” C.J. sighed. “Ed just called, and he’s hopping mad about some blowup he had with Roger Sterling. I’m beginning to give up hope that this mentoring thing is ever going to work between them.” C.J. picked up the remote control again and returned to the last moments of Law and Order. Just before the end, a commercial came on for on-line stock brokerage Ameritrade. It featured a young office worker whose boss interrupts him from photocopying his face for party invitations—not to reprimand him but to ask for his help buying stocks on-line. The young guy shows his boss how to navigate the Web—and then explodes into an exuberant dance and invites his boss to the party. “Well, it certainly isn’t working out that way at Armor Coat, is it,” C.J. blurted, lifting himself off the sofa and walking across the room to the bookshelf. He picked up a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and absentmindedly flipped though the pages. “Like it or not, it’s the younger generation that will have to mentor us rather than the other way around,” C.J. mused. “And that’s a big problem for guys like Ed. He’s so proud—and so suspicious of technology. And so reluctant to change. But change is the only thing kids know.” “Like it or not, it’s the younger generation that will have to mentor us rather than the other way around,” C.J. mused. “And that’s a big problem for guys like Ed.” A New Kind of Mentor C.J. had, in fact, tried to do exactly what the Ameritrade commercial had depicted. Armor Coat’s HR department earlier in the year had initiated a reverse-mentoring program: all salespeople were strongly encouraged to choose a young mentor who could teach them how to store and call up information from Armor Coat’s new on-line databases and how to surf the Web. The thought was, if the customer-focused salespeople understood the Web more, they could help Armor Coat use the Internet to boost profits and improve service. When C.J. discovered that Ed had failed to pick a mentor, he decided to assign Roger to work with him. What Roger lacked in people skills, he made up for in sheer smarts and in his interest in insurance—two virtues that Ed admired a lot. C.J. even dared to hope that Ed would be flattered to get one-on-one attention from the company’s tech guru. “Give Ed space to ask you naive questions. He’s got to learn about things he’s not familiar with,” C. J. counseled Roger. “But listen to his questions, too, because he knows a lot about our customers.” Roger was less than optimistic. He thought the whole experiment was a waste of time. “What’s at stake is not a few computing skills but the fact that guys like Ed have to learn to think about the business in an entirely new way,” he told C.J. “Ed needs a complete change in mind-set, and I can’t manage that by teaching him a few tricks on the computer. In themselves, computer training classes are pointless.” The relationship didn’t get better from there. Only last Monday, a furious Roger had called C.J. to complain that Ed had skipped a critical meeting outlining how the Web would create a more efficient interface between insurers and their customers. “That fast-talking jock isn’t a team player,” Roger protested vehemently. C.J. didn’t have time to deal with the call just then. The board meeting was coming up, and he was deep into preparing a presentation on the company’s quarterly results—which for the first time in 12 years were dipping. “Can’t you guys work out your differences?” he asked. “Just sit down and try to work through the problem.” When Ed rang three minutes later to complain about the same meeting, C.J. blew up. “I don’t want to hear about it anymore. My God, Ed, you’re twice his age. Fix it!” The Dinner That Didn’t Reluctantly, Roger and Ed agreed to meet at the Wild Ginger that Sunday night to try to patch things up. It was the first time they had ever sat down for a meal together, and Ed was late. He’d been shuttling his kids back and forth to soccer games all day, and he was tired. When he got to the restaurant, Roger was already seated at a table, sipping green tea. “Ah, you’re drinking my daughter’s favorite,” Ed said, trying to make small talk. “She’s quite the computer one, she is.” Roger smiled politely but said nothing. Ed found his irritation mounting at the company for putting someone as socially inept as Roger Sterling in a position of authority. He ordered a double shot of Jameson’s, and then unfolded his chopsticks and started delicately poking around at the eel and California maki that Roger had ordered as an appetizer. Ed was the first to broach the subject. “C.J. said we should get together and try to iron out some of our differences,” he said, weighing every word. “Maybe for the sake of Armor Coat, we can make some of these innovations work.” Roger’s response was quick and nonchalant. “They are working,” he said. “I told C.J. that. We’re right on course. My team is getting things done even faster than scheduled.” Roger’s retort made Ed clench his fists under the table. “I’m not stupid, Roger,” his voice shook. “I may be many things, but I’m not stupid. The Web is changing distribution, yes, but great sales reps are and always will be the key to the insurance business. People don’t buy insurance—you sell it to them. They don’t think about their mortality—you gently remind them of it. I know how this business works. I’ve been doing it since before you were out of diapers.” Roger had heard this story before, and his eyes moved up when waiters passed by the table. Ed was deeply annoyed by Roger’s reaction but pressed on. “Let’s put our cards on the table,” he said finally. “I don’t like the way you and the other ‘whiz kids’ have been treating us in sales. You’re condescending. You routinely schedule meetings on short notice without even checking whether it’s a good time for us. You don’t respect our experience.” Roger leaned in toward Ed. “Look,” he said, trying to be conciliatory, “I’m not saying work in the field doesn’t pay off. But I don’t think you realize how much the customer’s mentality is changing. People want information fast. They want to be able to compare the numbers and the services, and that’s a lot easier to do on-line. As I see it, you have two options: you can join the team, or you can leave the team. It sounds brutal, but the younger people in sales are getting it.” Ed was horrified. “Let me give you some advice, kid,” he said, reaching for his wallet. “Don’t ever go into PR.” Ed slammed enough cash on the table to cover dinner for both of them. He pulled his coat close to his chest, turned on his heel, and stormed out of the restaurant. “You’re a million miles away,” said Karen, turning off the TV while C.J. was still flipping through the encyclopedia. “I was just thinking that mentoring seemed so much easier in my day when it was clear who did what,” her husband explained. “Wisdom got passed down through the generations. But these days it’s people who’ve dropped out of school who have the edge.” “I don’t think it’s all that strange,” Karen countered. “We learn from our kids, don’t we? And I always learn from my patients.” “Yeah, but when we were kids, Karen, I was an expert on stamps. You were an expert on Nancy Drew. Today’s kids are experts on a global revolution that is affecting every aspect of our lives. No wonder Ed feels like he’s losing control.” Just then, the phone rang again. This time it was Roger. He sounded tired—and fed up. “C.J., I’m a digital expert, not an expert on fixing the egos of insecure, middle-aged salesmen. That’s just not what I came to Armor Coat for. Either McGlynn leaves the team, or I do. That’s your decision. I’ll be around tomorrow if you want to talk.” C.J. replaced the phone in its cradle and relayed the latest news to Karen. “What am I going to do?” he asked with deep frustration in his voice. “I don’t need a generation gap at Armor Coat. I need these guys to connect. Otherwise, we won’t be here in five years.” What should C.J. do? Monica C. Higgins is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Harvard Business School in Boston. The events at Armor Coat do not describe mentoring, reverse or otherwise. We have a situation in which a young new-hire has been charged with teaching a salesman who has been with the company 23 years how to surf the Web. If it works, such a program might constitute coaching of some sort, but it is certainly not true mentoring, which involves both career and psychosocial support, such as friendship and caring. At bottom, this case is about organizational change—about a successful, family-run insurance business that needs to change the way it delivers services to customers. To effectively move Armor Coat in a new direction, C.J. Albert should be leading the charge. Instead, the CEO delegates the organizational change effort to Roger Sterling—a newcomer who does not seem to care about anything except money and technology. This is both unrealistic and bound to fail. It’s no surprise that at the end of the case, we have two valuable employees, Roger and Ed McGlynn, who are both ready to leave the company in a huff. The attempt to institute a reverse-mentoring program has clearly failed. Let’s see why. From the case, we know that C.J. has appointed Roger to mentor Ed. Yet research suggests that a mentoring relationship works best when it evolves over time, in an informal fashion, through a shared interest in professional development. This was clearly not the case at Armor Coat. Other research shows that effective mentoring relationships are those in which the communication styles of the mentor and protégé match one another. Here, the opposite is true. Ed enjoys interacting one-on-one with people, developing such strong relationships with his clients that they send him get-well cards. Roger has a robotic style. Clearly, this was not the right match—much less the right conditions under which C.J. could have ever expected a true mentoring relationship to flourish. Beyond his poor understanding of mentoring relationships, C.J. seems oblivious to the emotional fallout from the change effort at Armor Coat. His own diagnosis? “Generational differences,” he says, and at one point he even orders Ed to “Fix it!” This diagnosis does not address the real problem: as Ed clearly tells Roger at their ill-fated dinner meeting, the senior sales staff feels that its experience is not respected. Ed’s feelings are certainly not the bailiwick of any generation, be they 20-somethings or 40-somethings. Yet his complaint underscores a fundamental problem in this case: no change program can succeed simply by imposing a mechanistic mentoring program from above on employees who are struggling with a widespread transformation effort and who lack genuine respect for one another. Perhaps it is C.J.’s wife Karen who understands best what’s at stake. She recognizes that Armor Coat will have to integrate the young people if it is going to change. But she doesn’t see anything fundamentally new about that. She always learns from her younger patients, she says. So, too, in today’s information-based economy, knowledge may be king, but it’s the sharing that takes place between young and old that is essential. “In today’s information-based economy, knowledge may be king, but it’s the sharing that takes place between young and old that is essential.” C.J. will need both Roger and Ed to change Armor Coat. But before any sort of meaningful change effort—or even mentoring—can get under way, C.J. needs to exercise real leadership. He already understands that both Roger and Ed have their strengths, but he has failed to communicate that. He can begin there—it’s not too late. After all, both men have turned to him for advice and counsel. Now it’s C.J.’s turn to mentor. Lloyd Trotter is the CEO and president of GE Industrial Systems in Plainville, Connecticut. There’s an obvious lack of fit between Roger Sterling and Ed McGlynn in the reverse-mentoring program at Armor Coat, and C.J. should take immediate steps to end that relationship. But the trouble at Armor Coat goes deeper than a personality clash between these two men. Roger is not just a poor mentor, he is also an employee who is out of sync with the company’s core values. His attitude does not mesh with the values of teamwork and camaraderie that have long driven corporate culture at Armor Coat. So apart from the mentoring question, C.J. has to decide whether or not to keep Roger. Just as important, C.J. has to find some way to undo the damage to Ed. His top salesperson’s ego and self-esteem have been badly bruised. Given the current business pressures, C.J. can’t afford to have Ed become disengaged. Alienating him could have devastating effects on his productivity and, ultimately, on the company’s bottom line. Ed’s situation must be addressed as soon as possible. But Ed should get more than fuzzy words of reassurance from C.J. He deserves assistance in his efforts to accommodate all the changes that are currently unfolding at Armor Coat. At GE, we’ve learned that if an executive closes himself off from learning new things, he is putting his career in jeopardy—and the company’s success at risk. Ideally, there should be an intervention from human resources. After resolving these issues, C.J. has to reposition reverse mentoring more positively to his employees. To a large extent, it seems as though the program was created from the top down and forced on warring camps in the company. The business has a rich family history and a strong work ethic, so it seems as though Armor Coat’s employees would more likely accept reverse mentoring if it were positioned as a tool for collaboration rather than as an us-versus-them blockade. “It seems as though Armor Coat’s employees would more likely accept reverse mentoring if it were positioned as a tool for collaboration rather than as an us-versus-them blockade.” Armor Coat also needs to reexamine how it matches individuals. The company must take into account the dynamics of the people involved in the reverse mentoring relationship. C.J. needs to seek out best practices from other companies. How do they screen mentoring candidates? What personality traits make the best matches? What should the expectations be on both sides of the relationship? Lastly, the idea of reverse mentoring needs to be introduced prudently. I know that when I was presented with the possibility of having a younger person mentor me, I found it a bit daunting at first. But for both of us, the reverse-mentoring program at GE has been an excellent tool for mutual learning and growth. I believe that the key to our success is that no matter at what level we find ourselves in the organization, we can accept change. Those who cannot become obsolete in our organization. Meeting with my mentor has made us both more ready for change, and we quickly recognized numerous learning and teaching opportunities that cut both ways. I’ve learned a lot about the Internet from my mentor, and I’ve been able to experience and see firsthand the bright, young talent that represents the future leadership of my business. At the same time, my mentor has had a tremendous opportunity to learn what it’s like to be a CEO. If we had both closed ourselves off from these experiences, it would have been a senseless waste. That’s how I see it for anyone who is not open to learning—top down or bottom up. It’s slamming down the gate on your own future. It’s not too late for C.J. to make reverse mentoring work at Armor Coat. By learning from this experience, he can begin to develop some best practices that will not only help his company become an e-business but also raise the bar for other companies that want to launch a reverse-mentoring program. Steven Luria Ablon is an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and at Massachusetts General Hospital, both in Boston. He is also a training and supervising adult and child analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. My father, who was the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, often told me that progress occurs when old men die and young men take over. I argued the point with him. My view is that real progress occurs when people are open to learning from mentors, regardless of their age. And an essential characteristic of good mentoring is openness, by both parties, to the complexities of the other person’s experience. “Real progress occurs when people are open to learning from mentors, regardless of their age.” At Armor Coat, neither Ed nor Roger has any real interest in trying to understand the other’s experience. We don’t know exactly why, but it may have to do with their own vulnerable self-esteem or how they identify with authority figures, such as parents or siblings. Whatever the reasons for the antagonism between Ed and Roger, it’s up to C.J. to find a creative way to help his employees work together. By sending the two men out to dinner alone, C.J. abdicated his responsibility. Rather than assume that he understands their experience, he should sit down with them and immerse himself in their viewpoints. C.J. needs to establish an environment in which Ed and Roger feel comfortable sharing their experiences and concerns. By fostering such an exchange, C.J. would be mentoring his two subordinates by letting them see the importance of openness and co-mentoring. He could then use that experience to demonstrate to Ed and Roger how the two men can learn from each other—and turn Armor Coat into a company that makes the best use of the old and new economies. Let me use a clinical experience to illustrate how this can work. In my work as a child psychoanalyst, I always learn from my patients. One such patient was a ten-year-old named Harry. His parents brought him to me because over the course of a year, Harry had looked sad, was often tearful, and was constantly daydreaming in class. After Harry got to know me and began to feel comfortable in the office, he told me he wanted to play chess. He announced that he was very good at chess. We played the game several times, and it turned out that his way of playing the game was quite unusual. Whenever he faced a difficult situation, he would announce a new rule that gave his pieces unusual powers. Then he would defeat me soundly. As the games continued, Harry told me that the queen was actually a very weak piece. He explained that the queen was weak because she had to spend so much time watching out for the king, who really could do very little for himself. Over time, Harry and I came to understand how the game related to his life. In the past year, his father had developed asthma and on several occasions had life-threatening attacks. Harry’s mother lived in terror that her husband would die suddenly. She gave up her usual activities in order to be available in case of an emergency. In this context, family life became chaotic and confusing. Harry felt that his home life had become unpredictable and precarious. Harry and I were mentors to each other. I learned from Harry that he didn’t need help with the rules of chess or to be able to accept losing; he needed someone to understand the broader experience at the root of his behavior. At the same time, Harry began to realize that I was interested in exploring and understanding his conflicting and confusing feelings and experiences. He learned that I wanted to understand him, not judge him. If they are to learn from each other, Ed and Roger need to try to be open in a similar way. They need to understand that by working together and embracing their differences they will ultimately be able to harness each other’s strengths to help build a successful business. They both have unique contributions to offer. But to have any chance of working well together, they’re going to need C.J. to step in and lead by example. Learning about the complexity of another person’s experience is essential in all relationships and crucial for a vital and satisfying life. Although I don’t always agree with my dad, I’ve learned a lot from him over the years. Understanding our differences brings us even closer. Stuart Pearson is marketing services IT manager for Procter & Gamble in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Mohan Mohan is vice president of the health and beauty care division of P&G in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The real problem in the reverse-mentoring relationship between Ed and Roger is the huge amount of fear and insecurity in both players. C.J. may not be able to salvage them as a team, but he may be able to use the conflict to learn valuable lessons about the nature of mentoring and change. The brash, steely-eyed but technologically brilliant Roger actually has a lot to teach Ed about competing successfully and profitably in the networked economy—despite what Roger thinks about computer training being “pointless.” It isn’t just by luck that Roger has positioned himself as a Web guru in an industry that is ripe for an on-line revolution. He is not afraid of change or hierarchy, and in our experience that’s a good trait for young mentors to have. Reverse mentors can’t be easily intimidated; they need the self-confidence to set challenges for their protégés or the relationship won’t work. Roger’s role as mentor should be to stoke Ed’s enthusiasm for technology—but C.J. also needs to convince Roger that he, in turn, has something to learn from Ed. Without this mutual deference, no mentoring relationship can ever work, reverse or otherwise. This is where Roger’s lack of people skills gets him in trouble. Not only is he unable to increase Ed’s comfort level with technology, but Roger seems uncertain whether he even wants to reach out to Ed. At this point, C.J. must convince Roger to step back from his mission of pushing technology to its limits and take stock of the interpersonal factors at play. That would be a big first step toward improving the relationship. Of course, Ed has his own issues that he has to come to terms with: there are the new-hire salaries, the layoffs in the sales department, and perhaps even fears about growing older. And although Ed is great at what he does—the numbers show that—he is unwilling to learn how to conduct business in a changing electronic world. All his antics, from bailing out of a training session with Roger to failing to pick a mentor in the first place, point to a man who is afraid to change his good-old-boy ways of selling insurance. Ed may never become a technology expert, but he needs to take a more pro-active approach to getting this new training and information. This is where HR could help, perhaps by creating a customized program to introduce Ed to the technological skills he so badly needs. No matter what happens to Roger and Ed, C.J. shouldn’t give up on the concept of reverse mentoring—it can be a powerful tool. But C.J. should realize that mentoring has a delicate bond at its core—one that can’t be forced. P&G’s reverse-mentoring program is voluntary, and it has worked beautifully time and again. Even though the working relationship between the two of us fit into an overall training initiative here at P&G, we originally came together because we wanted to, not because we were assigned to one another. We arrange mutually convenient times to meet. We don’t consider the age gap a burden but an opportunity that enriches our business and personal relationships—whether we are talking about PalmPilots or work-life balance. “The age gap is not a burden but an opportunity—whether we are talking about PalmPilots or work-life balance.” The reverse-mentoring program at P&G has another benefit—it spreads the knowledge base throughout the company, which is crucial to any organization’s success. There are many ways to get conversations going in a company, but reverse mentoring is one of the best. And all it takes is a genuine willingness to learn. Indeed, our own experiences with reverse mentoring at P&G have been deeply guided by Alvin Taylor’s observation that “in the twenty-first century, an illiterate is not one who cannot read or write, but one who is unwilling to learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Yoram “Jerry” Wind is the Lauder Professor of Marketing at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia. He has been leading the development of the Wharton e-Fellows program, which includes a reverse-mentoring component that matches senior executives with Wharton students. C.J. must be extremely frustrated after getting off to such a promising start with his efforts to bring Armor Coat into the digital era by creating an “unintimidating” on-line insurance product. He hired a highly qualified technology person, Roger, and empowered him to lead the company through its Internet revolution. He rightly recognized the need to integrate Roger’s on-line expertise with Ed’s understanding of customers’ needs—and instituted a reverse-mentoring program to create that synergy. But despite his best intentions, C.J. now has a couple of extremely unhappy players on his hands—high performers who represent the two functional groups that lie at the core of C.J. and Armor Coat’s e-transformation strategy. So what happened? As I see it, there are three fatal flaws in C.J.’s strategy. First off, the CEO planned to implement companywide change through the functional silo of technology rather than through a cross-functional team. Next, he neglected the organizational architecture. He failed to alter the culture and the compensation systems so they could assist the e-transformation at Armor Coat. Finally, C.J. didn’t create an effective reverse-mentoring program. Reverse mentoring, to work effectively, should be a nonthreatening, supportive, and educational experience for both parties. So the selection of a mentor is as critical as the choice of a coach in any professional sport; it requires careful thought and consideration. For instance, you wouldn’t have Andre Agassi coach Pete Sampras while the two still compete aggressively against each other. Assigning Roger to coach Ed is just as inappropriate. From Ed’s perspective, Roger is the enemy. His arrival prompted the layoffs of Ed’s friends and colleagues, and his impersonal way of transacting business goes against everything that Ed believes in. From Roger’s perspective, Ed is not a colleague in need but someone who stands in the way of progress. Given the intense opposition of these men, the relationship forced by C.J. was bound to fail. The mentor and protégé must share a common objective, and there must be trust between the two parties. The right mentor for Ed would be a young person with expertise in technology—and someone who can show empathy and interest in Ed’s mastering the technology necessary to take Armor Coat into the next millennium. The mentor should also show a healthy respect for the skills that Ed brings to the table. Given his personality, maybe Roger should not mentor at all. “Reverse mentoring can solidify collaboration among functional groups, but it cannot be the only tool that enforces such teamwork or the sole catalyst for change.” A final point: reverse mentoring can solidify collaboration among functional groups, but it cannot be the only tool that enforces such teamwork or the sole catalyst for change, as seems to be the expectation here. Rather, effective reverse mentoring is a by-product of good communication that already exists between functional groups. Even the best mentor-protégé relationships have their limits.

Too Old to Learn?

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