Inside Intel's Mentoring Movement

Ann Otero seems like an unlikely mentor -- at least by the rules most companies apply. The 12-year Intel veteran is neither a star engineer nor a fast-track sales executive. She's a senior administrative assistant.

But Otero has rare gifts that Intel prizes. Among the 5,500 employees at the company's sprawling New Mexico plant, Otero is a master at tapping into the informal people networks that make the company tick. Need to know who to call in human resources about a difficult employee? Wondering how to decode the company's internal teams? Otero knows who to call and how to read the Intel culture. Her ability to navigate Intel is so refined that she's currently teaching her skills to an Intel manager who happens to outrank her. That's the Intel way of mentoring -- and it has almost nothing in common with traditional, corporate mentoring programs. Intel's way is more democratic, more systematic, and faster paced. Most important, it has nothing to do with individual career advancement.

Started in 1997 at one of Intel's largest chip-making facilities in New Mexico, the company's mentoring movement shows that an old-fashioned idea can be updated to work perfectly -- even in an industry that changes with stunning speed. Traditional mentoring tethered an up-and-comer to an old hand for years of personal-development and career advice. It was an approach that seemed best suited for slow-moving industries operating in more stable times. But Intel took the idea of mentoring and reinvented it to fit a competitive environment where what matters most is an employee's ability to do the right things right away.

Intel's version matches people not by job title or by years of service but by specific skills that are in demand. "This is definitely not a special program for special people," says Lory Lanese, Intel's mentor champion in New Mexico. Nor is the company's mentoring-with-a-difference approach all about face time and one-on-one counseling. Instead, Intel's program uses an intranet and email to perform the matchmaking, creating relationships that stretch across state lines and national boundaries. That enables Intel to spread best practices quickly throughout the far-flung organization. Finally, Intel uses written contracts and tight deadlines to make sure that its mentoring program gets results -- fast.

It Came From the Desert

In the sagebrush-strewn desert about 15 miles north of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Intel's hulking semiconductor facility dominates the landscape. Three chip plants operate here, including one of its newest: Fab 11X. Smokestacks poke into the sky, and in the parking lot, Chevy trucks outnumber BMW sedans. A small version of Intel's famous logo is the only thing that associates the site with the company's better-known Silicon Valley headquarters. It seems an unlikely place for bold thinking about human-resource issues.

But this is where Intel's mentoring movement got its start as a way to train new managers quickly. And this is where its inspiration and innovation still originate. Because of New Mexico's success in spawning a human-resources mentoring program that has connected thousands of people within the company, Intel has committed money and resources, even in these tough economic times, to fund its mentoring programs for this year.

When the New Mexico factory began pairing up old-timers with new managers five years ago, it was out of absolute necessity. During the go-go 1990s, Intel raided established plants, like the one in New Mexico, in search of managers and technical experts to run the new factories that were opening around the world. The New Mexico factory was left with few experienced people and a fresh batch of trainees who had to learn quickly. "We'd been tapped out," says Lee Ballew, a human-resources development manager who was part of the four-person team that spearheaded New Mexico's mentoring projects. "We'd sent off our experts, and we needed to grow new ones."

Previous mentoring programs at Intel had ground to premature halts. Before launching its new effort, the New Mexico team first sought early assurances of high-level support. "Good things aren't free," Lanese says. "I told management about the cost and commitment and asked them to be mentors as well."

Then the team analyzed the reasons behind past failures. It discovered that Intel's previous mentoring programs had largely been informal. Ambitious young employees who wanted rapid promotions would find a more senior person who could offer them pointers. The only people who took that risk were the ones with a lot of nerve or political savvy -- which made for a hit-or-miss track record.

The New Mexico team didn't want its version of mentoring to be about pushing a few people up the corporate ladder. Instead, the program's success would hinge on how well knowledge was passed along to a new generation. That meant rethinking how mentors and "partners," or those looking to be mentored, were paired up, and then outlining in detail what they should do once they were in a mentoring relationship.