Rock on Design

Friday, February 03, 2006

I Believe in Yesterday: Recap 4

Here we go again… I just might accomplish my feet to provide both of my readers with a full weeks worth of blog entries.

January Recap Part 4
So far I have covered the Auction convention, excessive hours, and NASCAR. Today I will tackle the drama filled topic of MANAGEMENT.

At one time in my graphic design career I desired to become an Art Director and head up a team of professionals in the business of graphic design. I even played with the idea of owning a design firm and managing all the team. After my conference experience I decided that management sucks.

As we were planning for our Florida excursion the question of who would handle staffing came up in a meeting. The operations manager who usually would handle the assignments for all the staff informed us that he would be unable to attend the conference. This led us to an interesting question… “Who was going to be in charge of ALL the staff and workers while in Florida?” Being on the planning committee and a person that is often given the responsibility of leading a group, I volunteered for the task of Staffing manager.

(Fast forward 2 months, and 1 co-manager later.)

I found myself in Florida with my co-manager Tim. We were given the task of providing all of the conference attendees with stellar service while still keeping Registration, the store, awards, information, and backstage staffed by a skeleton crew. This was a major feet since I just named 5 areas for attention and we only had 16 people at our disposal. The process was made harder by the fact that neither Tim nor I are full time managers. That means, that we have NO authority to make decisions. (Sure we flew by the seat of our pants, but anytime we had to plan ahead was blown by the fact that we often had to run our plan past 3 different upper level managers.

I am sure many of you have heard the saying – “Fake it till you make it.” Well for 1 week I was faking it from 6am to 12am (and even longer on most days.) My conclusion… management is for managers. I am a designer… I think I will stick with designing.

(Heading lyrics – Yesterday by the Beatles)

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