In the terminology of instructional design, mentoring is the process of guiding someone through their career; coaching is the process of guiding someone through the performance of a task or duty.

North Pacific has extensive experience developing coaching strategies to help large corporations take advantage of their in-house expertise to develop new employees or to help current staff learn new skills.

For the Public Utility District of Everett, WA, we developed a coaching system that relied on a small core group of experienced personnel. Coaches were trained extensively in the implementation of a new CIS/OV system, and walked the floor on "go-live" day, providing assistance and guidance as required.

The result: thousands of person-hours of classroom time saved, an almost seamless transition between CIS systems, a developed cadre of trained coaches with hands-on experience, and virtually no loss in productivity, despite sometimes radically different business processes.