More Adventures in Management
So much to learn!
Being the 32nd edition of Assorted Nonsense, the official newsletter of Donovan Street Press Inc.
More Adventures in Management
I’ve written a bit about my initial experiences in management here. What follows are a few more recollections and thoughts on the matter.
As I write about management, know that I don’t claim any special ability as a leader. All I have is some experience, a bit of training, and what that combination has taught me. Looking back, I’m sure some of the people I worked with would say, “Yeah, he was reasonably competent,” while others might have felt differently. And that’s okay.
The fact is, I had so much to learn. Probably still do. At the time, I’d just finished 19 years in production with CBC Radio. As a recording engineer and occasional producer, I’d come to feel like I had all the knowledge and none of the power. After being promoted into management, I felt like I had all of the power and none of the knowledge. (Actually, I didn’t have much power, either. Starting as Supervisor, Audio Systems, I was pretty much on the bottom of the power pyramid.)
My newbie manager brain required a lot of development. For example, I remember sitting in my boss John McCarthy’s office one day early on and John explaining to me some technical challenge we needed to sort out and me not absorbing it all. Those of you familiar with analog audio tape might understand this analogy. It’s like my brain was made of audio tape, capable of recording, but there were long stretches of leader tape mixed up in it (you can’t record on leader tape). So after I talked to John, I remembered some of what he said, but the rest simply hadn’t recorded. It had gone in one ear and out the other.
What was really happening was that I simply hadn’t developed certain muscles to allow me to do what I needed to do, such as remember important things that people told me. I hadn’t really needed to before. As the recording engineer for the radio show Q, for example, I had known what I needed to do and just did it. If somebody told me a four piece band was coming in, I just needed to know what instruments they played and I could figure out the rest from there. As a manager, though, John might tell me, “We’re upgrading Dalet to DaletPlus in Toronto and it’s already happened in these locations and it’s going to involve such and such” and about five sentences in my brain was only retaining about two in five words… not enough to make sense of what he was telling me.
This was at the very beginning of my career in management. Obviously I needed to develop techniques to keep up and I needed to do it fast. And I needed to do it on my own. Well, not entirely on my own, as I had John there for the first seven months of my management career, but on my own in the sense that there was no actual management training available to me at the time. I’d get lots later, but not in that first critical year.
I had a lot of self-doubt at that time. John would say, “Don’t forget, you have 19 years of production experience. You know the production environment. You know how the shows work, you know the studios, you know the gear, you know the people, etc. etc.” He was not wrong; I had all that knowledge upon which to build, and telling me this helped.
But the stuff I didn’t know… jeepers.
I had no idea how to run a meeting properly. I’d meet with a bunch of people about something and then I’d meet the same people two weeks later about the same thing and nobody would remember what the hell we’d talked about and decided because nobody had taken any notes. And then we’d have the same damned meeting again.
But I learned.
I learned to get people to repeat themselves if I didn’t get it the first time.
If I still didn’t understand something from that first person, I’d find somebody else and get them to explain it.
I learned to value clarity. The best people were those who understood stuff with absolute clarity to the point that they could explain it clearly to others. They were rare but worth their weight in gold. I aspired to be one of those people.
One of the most powerful and important lessons I learned was the Courage to be Stupid.
See, you can’t be afraid to be stupid. If you are, you’ll stay stupid. But if you’re brave enough to risk appearing stupid, you stand a good chance of becoming less stupid.
Say you’re at a meeting, and you don’t understand something. Wait a little bit to see if it becomes clear from the context. If it doesn’t, chances are you’re not the only one at the meeting who doesn’t understand. But you may be the only one brave enough to speak up and say, I don’t understand; can you please explain?
Most of the time you won’t actually look stupid. You’ll look smart for asking. Occasionally you will appear stupid. Maybe it’s been explained before, possibly even earlier in the meeting when you weren’t paying attention. Who cares? The important thing is you asked, and now you understand. You’ve emerged less stupid than before.
I like to say, “They say there’s no such thing as stupid questions. But there are, and I ask them.”
Whenever I say this, someone always counters with, no really, there are no stupid questions!
And I know what they’re trying to say. But my point is that IT’S OKAY if it’s a stupid question. Who cares if it’s a stupid question? Ask it anyway! And become less stupid.
I started carrying around a black notebook and a pen. And anything I thought I might need to remember I’d write down. My natural memory is horrible, but my memory supplemented by a trusty notebook is excellent. Anything that I actually needed to act upon I noted with an * (asterisk). Every day I’d review my notes in my little black book and I’d check off those asterisks that had been completed. And I’d see what I could do about those that I hadn’t yet addressed. I averaged about one black notebook a year. I still have them all.
I started taking my own notes at meetings. If it was a relatively informal meeting I’d just take notes in my black book. If it was a more formal meeting about something REALLY IMPORTANT and I was chairing the meeting I’d take notes on my laptop. I learned to chair those meeting and take notes at the same time. I could do that because I’m a good typist. I could talk and listen without looking at the keyboard and still take great notes.
I had a boss early on who criticized me for taking my own minutes. He said, “You can’t concentrate on the meeting if you’re taking your own minutes.”
He was wrong. I had no trouble concentrating on the meeting and taking minutes. In fact, I could concentrate better because I needed to understand exactly what we were talking about to be able to take those minutes properly. If I didn’t understand something sufficiently to be able to capture it in the minutes I would ask for someone to explain it better. And if I needed to take a few seconds to write it down people could wait for me to do so. I didn’t trust anyone else to take the minutes because I knew they might not take the same care, and I wanted to make sure everything was captured properly… especially action items. I would revise and distribute those minutes as soon as possible after the meeting.
The other thing I figured out about meetings was that they need to be properly run (chaired). Doesn’t matter how small or big the meeting is. If it isn’t properly run it’s probably going to be pointless. I don’t mean that you need someone with a gavel dominating everyone else. A meeting can be run very subtly. It just needs to be kept on focus and directed (and minuted in some fashion, however casually). If it was my meeting, I would usually have an agenda. Often just an informal agenda of stuff I wanted to cover (for, say, a small staff meeting); sometimes a more formal agenda announced ahead of time if it was a bigger meeting with people from other departments.
Some pet peeves about meetings. I hated people arriving late for meetings. (Especially with a fresh cup of coffee in hand that they’d obviously just purchased at the expense of arriving on time.) I always tried to start my meetings within two or three minutes of the actual start time of the meeting regardless of whether everyone was there or not. If everyone was (miraculously) present, I’d start right on time, if I could. (There were exceptions; in this age of video meetings, everyone usually arrives within a minute or two of the actual start time of the meeting. Less chance to socialize before the meeting. So, if it was a video meeting with the same group of friendly people in some regular meeting, we’d usually enjoy some friendly chit chat off the top… often about dogs.)
I also couldn’t stand meetings that went on too long. One hour tops for meetings, as far as I’m concerned, unless it’s something super complicated that absolutely can’t be sorted out in an hour. Sometimes, if everything had been addressed, I would just stand up at the one hour mark, signalling that the meeting was over, for me at least. The engineering department was the worst at keeping their meetings on time; some of those guys would sit there and jibber jabber all day if you let them (I had the highest respect for them otherwise).
Biggest pet peeve? There was a senior manager who’d often arrive twenty or so minutes late. By the time he’d get there we’d already have everything sorted out, and then he’d make us have the exact same meeting again for his benefit. Super annoying.
As an aside, lots of people have told me they hate meetings. Probably because they endured so many poorly run and pointless meetings. I attended on average 3-4 meetings a day during my management career. There was no point hating meetings; much better to just do them properly and make them work for me (and everyone else).
Once during those early days in management I confided in a colleague that I felt like I was faking it. “Fake it till you make it,” she told me. So I did. Around the same time I told John McCarthy that I was deliberately reining in my personality. I felt like the real me was too informal; I was trying to appear more professional. “Don’t rein it in too much,” John advised me.
In other words, it was a while before I felt like myself as a manager. Before Joe the human being and Joe the Manager became one whole person.
About a year into the gig, though, the manager in the office next to mine, Gerry Samson, said, “You look like you’re having fun.”
And he was right. I was.
Yellowface by R. F Kuang
In a few weeks on our podcast Re-Creative we’ll be talking to editor and author Robert Runte about R.F. Kuang’s novel Yellowface. Robert highly recommends Yellowface. He especially recommends the audiobook version because of the quality of the performance. After we recorded our conversation for the podcast, I purchased Yellowface and listened to it on some long drives. Robert’s right; it is a compelling book.
As Robert points out in our upcoming conversation, it’s especially interesting to anybody who has anything to do with publishing. Many’s the time I winced listening to the novel as I recognized my own thoughts and behaviours in those of the main character, an author who desperately wants to be successful. Though I would not be willing to go to the same lengths to acquire that level of success (she essentially steals another author’s work, claiming it as her own).
Yellowface is an engaging, accomplished work until near the end. It never goes off the rails completely, but I did feel it got a little over melodramatic as it wrapped up. The resolution of Yellowface is not quite as expert and eloquent as all that comes before. And the protagonist is quite off-putting. So many opportunities to do the right thing; almost always she makes the wrong choice. But then, one or two right choices and the whole book would vanish in a puff of smoke.
Still, I recommend it for anyone interested in a cutting commentary on modern traditional publishing (indie publishing is a whole other story; who’s going to write that book?)
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
Podcast
Re-Creative: a podcast about creativity and the works that inspire it.
This week our podcast features author Jenn Thorson discussing the classic children’s story, Alice inWonderland.
Jenn's latest work is set in the world of Wonderland. She writes about Mary Ann Carpenter, the White Rabbit’s former housemaid, who must solve various mysteries. Jenn has also written humour and humorous science fiction.
Jenn, Mark and I discuss the history of the Alice in Wonderland books and the impact they've had on our culture. It's a fascinating conversation about the nature of writing with a “dream-like” quality.
Future episodes of Re-Creative will feature Ira Nayman, Blair Young, Bruce Sterling, Tom Bradley, Hugh Spencer, with plenty more guests on the way.
All previous episodes are available online, comprising the first 2 seasons, over 40 conversations with creative people from all walks of life about the art stoking their imaginative fires.
Distribution
Regular readers know that I’ve been exploring book distributors in the last several issues of this newsletter. This week we look at these folks:
Morning Dove Press
Based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, these folks describe themselves as “a Christ-centred publishing house in Atlantic Canada. We believe that our faith in Jesus is the greatest inspiration for creativity and storytelling which can be powerful tools for sharing God’s love with the world.”
Dr. Emily Pelley, PhD is the founder and publisher. I’m not sure where I got the idea that they’re a distributor… turns out they’re more of a publisher. My mistake. Should have included them in my publisher’s survey.
So that just leaves one distributor left to go: Nimbus Distribution, which we’ll cover in the next issue.
Featured Book
A Time and a Place: A Strange Dimensions Book
“ENTERTAINING, CHAOTIC ADVENTURE.” ~ Publishers Weekly.
An unlikely hero travels to other worlds and times to save a boy who does not want to be saved in this unique and imaginative adventure, by turns comic and tragic:
I beat my wings and the horizon stabilized before me. I glided for a while, trying to get my bearings. My wings? I angled my head to see. Air rushed past me with a whoosh that only now registered on my consciousness. Wings… I had wings! Complete with feathers. Were they mine? I lifted the right one up to see. It was my wing all right, upholstered in white feathers with a smattering of grey. The manoeuvre together with the shock of discovering that I was a bird threw me into a stall, and I plummeted earthward. This was not good.
Coming Soon from Donovan Street Press Inc.
The Gates of Polished Horn by Mark A. Rayner.
Huey and the Wasteland by Matt Watts
A Peculiar Symmetry by Tanah Haney
Appearances
Coming up:
I’ll be doing another signing with Partridge Island Publishing in the Area 506 Container Market in Saint John, NB Friday Sept 27th
Donovan Street Press Inc. will be at a Pitch the Publisher Event Area 506 Container Market Saint John, NB. Saturday Sept 21st 2024
I will also be at three Athena’s Touch Craft Fairs this fall, dates yet to be determined, at the Riverview Lion’s Club in Riverview
Joe Mahoney on Spotify
Follow Joe Mahoney and Donovan Street Press Inc. on: Goodreads, Bluesky, Threads, Mastadon, Facebook, and Instagram
This has been the thirty-second edition of Assorted Nonsense, the official newsletter of Donovan Street Press Inc.