Captain’s Log – Who comes after you and how hard is their job

There was a note in the “Idea Bin” that said, “Captain – make it easy for the next guy, facilitate the world.”

That is something CJ Hadley harped on last year as she was teaching me how to do all the RANGE magazine tasks. “Think about who was going to touch this piece of paper or file or story next and what are they going to be faced with when they get ahold of it. Do everything you can to make what he has to do easier.”

Wouldn’t it be cool if everyone had just an inkling of that way of looking at the world in all our regular, everyday tasks. Think grocery carts, gas pump hoses, shirts on the rack at TJ Maxx. People. How about we think about leaving people better off for the next person who happens by them.

I suppose in my note taking the thinking was something along the lines of, “If we all did that, wouldn’t it be so much nicer as we move through the world?”

We certainly don’t want to be the guy who makes it more difficult for whoever comes after us to get what he needs to do done.

When we’re newspapering this is actually pretty easy, it just requires a little forethought and planning. Teaching everyone to think this way sometimes takes a minute. Everyone comes with a different version of training, that’s for sure.

When I was little, Joe Dahl was very specific about how we behaved and made our way through life. I remember him at different levels of my growing up giving some version of the lessons around paying attention. “You need to be watching all the time. When you’re around horses, you need to be watching and always be a half a step ahead of the horse, prepared for any sort of behavior. When you work for someone always be looking to see what needs to done, always be anticipating what the boss may need.”

This advice has stood the test of time, but not everyone has had the same lessons. And now as I inherit those people in my office, it’s sometimes tricky to make the lessons stick and become more about who we are as a team rather than just something we do. But some of our crew has got it DOWN. They were raised by similar people. Their ability to see what’s going on and see what needs to happen next is almost instinctual.

And what a joy that makes the day. I love not having to worry someone won’t understand or get it done right. I love working with people you don’t have to explain things to, they just get it. We have some of those and it makes all we’re doing just a thrill.

So while we coach up our new kids and get the ol’ veterans to demonstrate, while we write instruction manuals and schedule tasks and all the things it takes to get these newspapers out the door, we’ll always be right here...

...Keeping you Posted.

Rach