The Kids Are Alright: the Mutual Benefits of Mentoring

Sulu: "She's supposed to have Transwarp drive." Scotty: "Aye. And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon." Kirk: "Come, come, Mr. Scott. Young minds, fresh ideas. Be tolerant."

That bit of dialog, from the motion picture Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), depicts how an older generation is typically cynical of the ideas of a younger generation simply because...they're new. Personally, I could never understand the stereotype that the older one gets, the more intolerant one becomes of the younger generation. I believe that one of the reasons why I have managed to constantly adapt to different industries and reinvent my career over more than two decades is because I find there is always something new to learn. And more often than not, those lessons come from people much younger than myself.

Most people will credit a mentor for being the guiding hand in their careers but for me (although I have my own mentors, too) much of the guidance I recall comes from people that I managed. Most of what I know about influencer marketing, I learned from a young lady who introduced me to toy designers in Japan and content publishers in Thailand while working at Nokia. Most of what I know about search marketing, I learned from a young man in his 20s whom we had just hired when I worked at Wego.com. Even today, I continue to learn about transmedia disciplines, storytelling workshops and content creation from my (much younger) social media team at Mediacorp. Among the many highlights of my time as part of the digital transformation team at Mediacorp is the chance to work with and learn from students, young entrepreneurs and content creators.

Through the Mediapreneur program, I work on and mentor local technology startups. In many ways, the opportunity to regularly interact with young minds with fresh ideas, attitudes unencumbered by corporate politics and bullshit, have been a welcome respite from the doldrums of working within a large corporate organization. The hope that many of the technologies, solutions and approaches they develop will soon be a part of Mediacorp's media ecosystem.

Last year, I was also part of Mediacorp's partnership with Nanyang Technological University's Peak program, where their best students are put into groups of five and given a real business problem to tackle. Two teams I was assigned to mentor where tasked to provide recommendations on how to best utilize Mediacorp's radio / digital audio assets in order to stay relevant to the 18-35 year-old audience.

Listening to these students talk about their attitudes towards "radio" -- more accurately described as digital streaming audio -- was a genuine eye-opener to myself as well as our own radio teams.

More recently, I have been working with the content creators in Bloomr.sg, Mediacorp's own creator network. Part of the Singapore Media Festival, Bloomr hosted Creators x SMF Ignite, a workshop where YouTube and Instagram creators from Southeast Asia learn from seasoned content marketers, advertising and media practitioners about how to develop media strategies and campaigns for advertisers.

The two-day event culminated in an activity where groups respond to campaign briefs that are judged by veterans from advertising agencies, Mediacorp's own Brand Studio and myself.

While I admit there is satisfaction in the knowledge that I am able to impart some wisdom from my own career, I continue to find the interaction with younger colleagues both educational and rewarding. The learning never stops and, as a wise man once said, you must always be ready to "unlearn what you have learned."