Mentor

What The Tool Does

Mentor is configured for the class of decisions that most founders and executives find hardest and handle worst: the people decisions. When to hire, when to fire, when to promote, when to reorganise, when to let a disagreement run and when to resolve it, when the problem is a person and when the problem is a structure that makes any person in that role behave the same way.

How The Tool Thinks

The framework Mentor applies distinguishes four categories of people problem, because confusing them is the most common failure mode. First, performance problems — someone who is not delivering against a clear role. Second, fit problems — someone who is delivering but not in a way that the organisation can work with. Third, structural problems — a role or reporting structure that would produce the same difficulty with any person in it. Fourth, interpersonal problems — a specific relationship failure that requires direct intervention rather than process change.

Most managers collapse all four into one, typically by misdiagnosing a structural problem as a performance problem and firing a blameless person, or by misdiagnosing a fit problem as a structural problem and reorganising around a situation that only requires a hard conversation. Mentor insists on disentangling them before recommending action.

What It Can And Cannot Do

Mentor can structure the diagnosis and surface options the manager has not considered. It cannot replace the direct knowledge of the specific people involved — their histories, their motivations, the texture of the working relationships. The output is most useful when the manager has enough detail to make the framework bite, and least useful when the description of the situation is so general that any diagnosis would fit.