Recent Blog Posts
Think Big with Mentee Insight: Strategic Solutions via Analysis
Mentee Insight, LLC (www.menteeinsight.com) is a business coaching and consulting company founded in January 2024 by Katsiaryna Zinavenka, New York tax attorney and entrepreneur, with support from Professor Scott A. Boorman, a strategy analyst and social network research expert.[1]
Drawing on diverse contributions to strategy from many civilizations and cultures worldwide, Mentee Insight is dedicated to building a vibrant community of strategists. What sets Mentee Insight apart is its innovative application of sequential strategy and strategic skills to foster a workplace culture of well-being, careers, and business growth.
The need for such an innovative strategy-driven approach is urgent. In today's fast-paced 21st century world, businesses are in uncharted territory – facing challenges that range from post-pandemic workplace issues and evolving workforce expectations to ongoing disruptive effects of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. In traditional workplace cultures, strategic skills – strategic thinking, strategic planning, and more – along with a strategic mindset have commonly been limited to a few top-level individuals, a committee, or even a single designated "strategist." However, today's organizations face unprecedented challenges that are simply too numerous, too diverse, and too dynamic for strategy to remain the domain of a select few. If these complexities are to be navigated effectively, strategic skills backed by a strategic mindset and implementation capabilities must therefore be embedded throughout the entire organization.
Can Your Business Defend Against Sabotage in the AI Era?
In the good old days, attacks on computers – or at least those that got written up in the newspapers – were usually highly visible. You clicked on a link in an email from a seemingly familiar source, and suddenly your monitor screen went dark. Or you found that, unbeknownst to you, all your files had become encrypted, and you didn't know the password. In cases like these, it was not hard to figure out that, very likely, you had been attacked. What remained was cleaning up or mitigating the effects of a software worm, virus, Trojan horse, etc.: scary (definitely!), costly for team productivity, but at least having a clear mission.
Nowadays, life is not so simple. Cyberwarfare or other highly visible attacks on computers – some perpetrated by lone wolves, others by organized groups like terrorists and state actors – still occur, of course, and the most effective attacks can trigger billions of dollars in damage to businesses, worldwide. But there are also many other attacks that are insidious, meaning that you may not know, at least not for a long time (if ever), that you have been attacked at all.
Why Are Strategic Thinking Skills Crucial for Career Growth?
We live in the digital age, most recently the age of applied AI. These technologies, which are now part of the fabric of everyday life, offer boundless practical opportunities for strategic manipulations of many types that are without precedent in earlier, simpler times.
For example, every piece of software we use, every app we use, contains manipulative possibilities because someone had to create that software or that app and the algorithms it uses, and someone else, most likely several someones, will know precisely how it works, its capabilities, and its limitations - but not you. If you are a user who mindlessly relies on that software or app, such actors may have real power over you. Some of them will exploit that power, often in unseen ways. Even just defending yourself calls for thinking strategically. Moving your career ahead and navigating all the digital vulnerabilities necessitates yet more sophisticated strategic thinking skills.
In the AI age, you must constantly deal with, and position yourself in relation to, countless peers, rivals, and others, some visible to you, many not. Some of those third parties, far more numerous and diverse than in a pre-digital era, will be sharp strategists to whose strategic moves you must respond in your own strategic ways so as not to be exploited, outmaneuvered, outcompeted, and left behind. Often, the most formidable strategic actors with whom you must deal are big organizations, which have their own manipulative ways of dealing with individual professionals like you, sharpened by more years of accumulated experience than even the most experienced human actors.
Why Is It Time for the "Harmony Is Inside You" Tendency?
Point A or Current Tendency in a Professional Environment
A professional environment encompasses different organizations with different lines of business (e.g., law firms, banks, medical centers, educational institutions, and more). However, professionals (e.g., lawyers, bankers, physicians, professors, corporate executives, private equity experts, etc.) are the ones who directly perform services, not organizations. And professionals define the climate of the organization in which they operate. In fact, in many ways, an organization is its professionals:
But as statistics and many other sources tell us, many professionals today have behavioral, psychological, or physical issues. For example, one influential recent study of lawyers reports that—among 12,825 American licensed, employed attorneys surveyed—"substantial rates of behavioral health problems were found:"
- 20.6% screened positive for "hazardous, harmful, and potentially alcohol-dependent drinking"
Disclaimer
Mentee Insight does NOT provide legal services. The protection of a client-lawyer relationship does NOT exist with respect to the nonlegal services provided. The information provided on this website does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice or tax advice.
info@menteeinsight.com