Investing, Sponsoring, and Other Small Musings

This tweet makes an excellent point. It also reminds me of something else I was thinking about, courtesy of a tweet or article or something (Tchaikovsky's sponsor gave him money on the condition that they never meet) which was that sponsorship is perhaps more important than mentorship.

Or rather, I was trying to think about ways you can expand and make more widespread the personalization and support currently reserved for the few.

The problem is that forcing it doesn't tend to work. Assigning mentors, for example, doesn't generally have the results we'd want. And people tend to connect with and relate the most to people like themselves. Like the soldier who did a stint as an army recruiter, who noticed recruiters tended to recruit those like themselves. (and at my last job, the guy sent to college job fairs tended to select interns a lot like himself.)

Its not necessarily ill-intentioned, just not very helpful for those who don't fit the mold.

And sponsoring is more than mentoring. Sure, it's nice to go to someone who can give you good career advice - but will they nominate you for high visibility projects? Put your name forward for promotion? The sad truth is that plenty of talented people get overlooked and/or taken for granted, and it's hard to shine when you're never given the opportunity to. 

Be nice if the 1% committed to sponsoring someone from the other 99%. Or even the bottom 50%. It's not the sort of thing I can see happening voluntarily though, and there's worse problems with trying to force it.

(Funny, though. Ran into someone in Afghanistan that made me realize being a powerful man came in part by showing how many underlings you could support. Sort of like medieval feudal lords, perhaps? There are some very good reasons we hot away from that, but yet again we come back to the notion that society functions best when a great deal is expected from those who have been given a great deal. To paraphrase Luke 12:48).