PLATO & Business Mentoring

Plato Ireland is dedicated to the successful development of Ireland's indigenous small and medium enterprise (SME) sector. Plato offers owner managers a business support forum where they can tackle the challenges and issues of today's business world.

Having competed the comprehensive PLATO training programme I was a group leader for the Dublin programme, supporting a group of 10 business owners/ manager via monthly meetings, sourcing materials based on the groups needs; facilitating introductions to appropriate advisers and/or networks; and providing ad hoc accompaniement and support over the two tear period of the programme.

I am currently completing my “Learning Log” for a qualification in Business Mentoring. The log is based on my experience as a mentor to both individual organisations and, via PLATO to groups.

Business Mentoring Theory: Focusing on current challenges and issues facing the self-employed and how the business facilitator/mentor can support those involved to overcome the barriers and inhibitors encountered.

Business Mentoring Process: Drawing on organizational theory and practice this module should identify perspectives on the group process, group dynamics and individual behaviour

Business Mentoring in Context: the core components of the effective management of organizational principals and in the context of the Plato Network the entrepreneurial personality

Sustaining the Mentoring Relationship: building an understanding of strategic planning including analytical skills to formulate, explain, implement and evaluate the strategies that create, maintain and sustain the Mentoring relationship

Based on my review of academic & professional research into the area, aligned to my own experience – both with PLATO and working with individual organisations; I prepared a model of what Group-based mentoring would require:

What is the Logical Framework (LogFrame)?

Having worked with a number of NGOs & project-based organisations during 2008, I have designed an MSExcel-based integrated planning tool - based on the LogFrame:


The main concept of the LogFrame is “means & ends”. The better the means and end linkages between each level of aims (the matrix), the better the programme design. By definition, each programme has an “if-then” or “means-&-end” logic embedded in it.
o If we produce certain results under certain conditions,
o Then we can expect to achieve certain other outcomes

The LogFrame has the following advantages:
- It brings together in one place a statement of all the key components of a project (this is particularly helpful when there is a change of staff)
- It presents them in a systematic, concise and coherent way, thus clarifying and exposing the logic of how the project is expected to work
- It separates out the various levels in the hierarchy of objectives, helping to ensure that inputs and outputs are not confused with each other or with objectives and that wider ranging objectives are not overlooked
- It clarifies the relationships which underlie judgments about likely efficiency and effectiveness of projects
- It identifies the main factors related to the success of the project
- It provides a basis for monitoring and evaluation by identifying indicators of success, and means of quantification or assessment
- It encourages a multidisciplinary approach to project preparation and supervision.


The MSExcel tool allows for all aspects of the LogFrame planning process, that is to say good-decisions around objectives, activities and resource (time, money & things) optimisation, to be captured in a sinlge, integrated tool.


Advantages of the Integrated LogFrame tool include:
1. Defining the objectives in the most concise, manageable way – SMART


2. Directly linking the objectives to outputs (results); inputs (resources), ensuring that the activities (who) are Measurable & Achievable

3. Activity & resource-based planning to better define the Relevant, Time-bound responsibilities of participants & partners in the programme – and the resources (that, combined, make up the budget) available to the programme


5. An integrated Project Plan – aligning objectives to results (outcomes) to activities to responsibilities (who) and to resources (time-money-things).


6. It also integrates the LogRisk register into the same tool – reflection risks & assumptions:
• A Risk is a definable, but unknowable event that we presume WILL occur. – as a result additional activities and resources will be required in the programme to monitor &/or mitigate these risks
• An Assumption is a definable, unknowable event that we presume will NOT occur, and so additional resources are not immediately required in the programme, although these assumptions should be monitored as part of Monitoring Indicators


7. And finally the tool allows you to “link” the programme LogFrame to the MDGs and, inn this case the Irish Aid donor priorities – aligning programmes to both strategic goals and donor priorities

What is “programme”?

Programme is the term used to describe the consolidated approach to an NGOs projects, partners and participants (a project being “a planned endeavour, usually with a specific goal and accomplished in several steps or stages”). From a practical perspective there are two types of Programmatic approach:

Ways of working: this is where the approach draws on and shares appropriate management practices & policies that enable the efficient delivery of the NGO’s supports & services

Type of intervention: is where a shared understanding of the beneficiaries requirements allows suitable, sustainable, successful development interventions to be designed and implemented where the challenges of poverty alleviation are similar

The focus of a programmatic planning process is based on a participative engagement with partners & participants, where possible, facilitating a bottom-up approach to planning that maximises reflection, research & discussion – which provides the basis for good decision-making.

Planning is the processes of reflection, research and discussion that allow the organisation to make “good decisions”.


Good decisions are those decision made with the best information available at the time. It is only with hindsight that the organisation can determine if “good decisions” were the right decisions.

Good decisions can be made around resource requirements & optimisation over longer & shorter time periods plus key activities, risks & dependencies that will impact on the progress towards meeting the identified objectives.

Good decisions made at the outset here will allow for good plans to be prepared and these plans will form the basis of project funding (dispersals & accounting), monitoring (progress), evaluation (achieving objectives) and impact (success of projects, programmatic lesson learning, etc.).

Plans are the documented outputs and actions associated with “good decisions”. As a result it is better for an organisation to have good planning (reflection, research & discussion) that achieves “good decisions” than to have Plans based on poor decision-making. It is these good-decisions that build the organisation's & programme's (projects, partners & participants) capacity

Capacity is the optimisation of the three primary resources available to any organisation – Time; Money & Things. Capacity is built through improving the quality of decision-making within the organisation so as to better optimise these three resources towards the achievement of the organisations objectives {Plans})