Focusing on minutiae

Today, I finished a very good meeting. I know. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? But really, it was informative.

Every week, everyone in my office gets together and we go over our paper. It’s more than a meeting, it’s a training session. It’s immediate, worthwhile, constructive and professional – unlike most droning office meetings. We actually cover topics, develop ideas and listen to one another. See, all meetings aren’t bad.

As we covered various aspects of newspaper design and writing styles, I was thinking on some of the big-pictures aspects of our career field and how the supervisors in our field don’t get to get into the trenches like we do – how their main goal is that the product gets completed, not how it gets completed.

What got me thinking this way is my recent job searching. The position I’m hoping I get is very similar to what I’m doing now. I’ll still be editing and designing, just for a larger area of responsibility and a different kind of product. I’ll still be dealing with the minutiae. It will still be my job to “get my hands dirty” with the end product. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Supervisors have it tough. On the one hand, employees tend to be impressed with bosses who aren’t afraid to mix it up with the workers and help get the job done. On the other hand, that same boss can quickly be seen to be a micromanager when he starts making suggestions about how things should be done. It’s a fine line, but the best supervisors pitch in to complete the job and trust their employees to do the jobs they were hired to do without having to hold their hand.

There are several jobs I’ve sent my resume in for that I now hope I don’t get interviewed for. They are supervisory. I’ll lose my minutiae. I could quickly become that micromanager. I could quickly lose sight of the big picture.

I was a noncommissioned officer. My mind is set on mission accomplishment. Let the officers worry about why we’re doing it.