Advice on Micromanaging: SIMPLY DON'T DO IT!!!

I stood outside, a sponge in one hand, a leaky hose in the other as I leaned over an empty patrol box now filled with suds. The mixture of water droplets from the spray of the hose and my sweat gleamed bright in the darkening evening. I grabbed a paper towel from the roll lying between my feet and mopped my face off as I looked over at the pinks and oranges that were strewn across the sky. Everything was absolutely perfect; the sun had come out for the first time all week, the food at the banquet which had just come to a close had been delicious, and now, after a little KP, I could walk down the hill to the concert we were about to hold for the participants of my course. I kept thinking to myself, that while my course had not been perfect, I really believed the participants had been given one of the best weeks of their lives. I couldn’t help smiling; I had taught sixty boys had to be leaders. What an accomplishment.

“Clang!” “What the (expletive removed)! There is no way I am cleaning that again. Tell Scott I am going down to the songfest.”

The sound came from the kitchen of the mess hall and I abruptly took off in that direction slamming the door behind me as I went in.

“Excuse me? What exactly do you want Ian to tell me?” I said as I rounded the corner nearly being smashed over as he threw his apron to the ground.

Dave, one of the members of my staff glared at me. “I have had it, this is it. I am not doing anymore work. Everyone is down at the songfest except for us. I don’t care what you say Scott, Ian and I are going down there.”

My eyes at that point must have glinted with rage because he suddenly backed down and said, “Look Scott, I am not trying to be an (expletive removed), but we aren’t doing anymore work up here, its not fair of you to keep us up here while everyone else is down there having a good time.”

At this point I had had it and matching my usual pacifistic attitude, I backed down, but for some reason, I couldn’t let him walk away having disrespected me for the umpteenth time that week.

“Fine you can go … but you are still being what you said you were trying not to be.”

I had said it, and it had really done no good. My only intention of keeping them behind was so that we could clean up the dining hall so we wouldn’t waste time the next morning. To me this was not much to ask. The whole week had been like this, with the members of my staff showing me no respect whatsoever just because I was making sure that everything got done. That was my job, I was the Youth Course Director, it was my first time holding this position, it was the first year this course was to be held for the entire state of Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts, I wanted the participants to have the best experience ever, and the list goes on. Simply everything in my mind had to run perfectly.

I walked back into the dining hall to find my final staffer who I had assigned to help me in the kitchen lying across one of the tables with his boots up playing on his laptop.

“WHAT IN THE WORLD DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING!!!” At that point I had had it. While the other two had walked off, at least they had been working. Tim on the other hand had simply been lying there doing absolutely nothing.

“We have work to do. Let’s go already.”

He looked up at me and merely rolled his eyes. “Nope, sorry, don’t feel like it.” he said.

I honestly couldn’t believe what I was hearing. All week, my staff had disrespected me. They had turned to the other Youth Course Director whenever I had asked them to do something and he gave me no support. The only way anything got done that week came after I had had to force people to go and do it.

At that point I broke down. I told him to go down to the songfest and I sat alone in the dining hall. Tears began to mingle with the sweat and water droplets still on my face from before. In years past, this course had been fun. I really had enjoyed my time as a staffer. In fact it meant the world to me. What I couldn’t understand was what all the other Youth Course Directors had that I didn’t. Why had they received respect from me and the other staffers? It was obvious I was doing something wrong.

It was now pitch black outside and I trudged slowly to the staff cabin, no longer wishing to join my fellow staff and participants at the songfest. I walked in and went into the room I was sharing with four other staffers and sat down on my bunk to think. Not ten seconds after I had arrived there, did I hear the slamming of the cabin door as in walked my Scoutmaster for the course. He beckoned to me, asking me to follow him outside to his truck where I soon learned that he had blown his tire out. As I helped him jack up his car and remove the tire he answered the question that I had been trying to answer all week.

“Scott, I am not trying to come down on you in anyway, but you need to learn not to micromanage. When the last Youth Course Director and I picked you for this, we knew how much it meant to you and you really have put on an amazing course, but the one thing you need to learn is that you can’t control everyone. You have to let them go ahead and do what they know they have to rather than be on their backs every step of the way. I can promise you, they can do it.”

His words hit me like a ton of bricks. It had been just that day I had stood in front of all the participants and told them that in order to be an effective leader, you must let them seek out their strengths and weaknesses and even if they fail, they learn from that failure and become assets to you later on. I hadn’t taken my own advice. My Scout masters advice didn’t end there though. I couldn’t micromanage my own life either. If I was a perfectionist on every detail, I would never accomplish anything and I would be truly miserable as my staff had been this entire week whenever I was breathing down their necks. This was just as much their course as it was mine. I had to let them run it the way they best saw fit, because then and only then each of their unique strengths would lead to the betterment of the course.

After fixing the tire to his SUV we both headed down the hill to the songfest. For the first time all week, I took a step back and watched my staff run with their program. Not only were the participants having fun, but both my staff and I were having fun. When things were looking like they were about to get out of hand, I let my staff handle it and they did so without my guidance. Had I been running the program exactly as I saw fit, I would not have experienced my first time being lifted on my back across the crowd of participants. Very simply, to be successful, a leader, a sane person, one can not micromanage every detail, because by doing so he limits the productivity and possible success for himself but more importantly can stagnate the growth of those he leads.

This is what success looked like at the end of the week.

Live, Love, Laugh

Before I begin, I want to make it quite clear that what I am going to write about here is very hard for me to get into, yet I feel it is necessary to truly understand the meaning of life.

It has been four years since I lost my grandfather to aplastic anemia, a disease that stops the body from producing blood cells necessary to sustain life. This definition leaves me cold every time I think about it. My grandfather lay in the hospital for several months growing weaker and feebler by the moment. His death was a textbook example of a life threatening disease fully taking its course. While this cause and affect relationship is quite understandable in the scientific world, to me, someone who has always looked beyond the black and white printed text, his death was incomprehensible. His death made me question everything about life. Why are we here, what’s our purpose, and if they do will mine have meaning? After months of tear strewn nights and angry rants at G-d, myself, and even sometimes no one in particular, I began to find answers. Rather than focusing on his death, I felt it necessary to focus on the aspect he would have wanted me to: his life.

The meaning of life is not that simple, in fact it is not simple at all. Buddhists believe that one does not truly find out the meaning of life until or just as they die and then must use this knowledge in their next life. Well, I have a different outlook on the meaning however, it came with the price of losing my grandfather (maybe Buddhists are not that far off after all). To really understand it, I have to give a little background on his life. My grandfather immigrated to the United States in the early years of the past century from the Ukraine. He entered the United States in Pennsylvania and his family would eventually move to New Haven, CT. He learned the meaning of hard work at a very early age as he and one of his brothers went into the clothing business or "schmarta” business as they called it in Yiddish. He owned that store for nearly seventy years. There were two things in his life that were important, that store, but more importantly his family. He and my grandma had two children, my dad and my aunt. I don’t really know much about how my dad grew up and exactly what style of living they experienced, but they were a close knit family from my understanding. My grandfather faced many hardships in his life, such as losing his brother at a young age, watching my grandmother have several strokes, as well as having a few heart attacks himself. While I don’t know whether fighting in WWII was a burden to him, my guess was that it was a hardship. Now that I have given this entire background I still don’t feel I have emphasized enough how much family meant to my grandfather. Just to give you an idea, he came out to everyone of my soccer games growing up, rain, sleet, or shine. His family was his world.

Now, this is my opinion on what exactly life is. The meaning of life is to experience pleasure, joy and happiness. Referring back to the poem, Psalm of Life again, the purpose of life is to enjoy and make the most of things. I feel that Green Day is trying to make that same exact point. I think my grandfather understood that too. He had two things in life that made him truly happy: one and most importantly his loved one and two his work. One could say he did not change the world, but in a way he did. For over seventy years he provided a service to people. Even though clothing is a material entity, some people find joy in buying new clothes, wearing new clothes, whatever else you do with clothes, and he provided that joy for them. As I am writing this I am realizing, the meaning of life is more than just having joy, it is sharing that joy with others. That is our purpose here on earth. We were all placed here so that we could all make each others lives as enjoyable and fulfilling as possible. He did that for me and I only hope I can do that for others. A life has true value when a person has done something for others and not simply him or her self. That is the only way ones life can be determined as having value and can happen at nearly anytime. It is truly unfortunate that we never really know or stop to learn the true value of someone’s life until they have passed away.

Now as for me, before I become sands in the wind, I want to leave an impact; I want to experience several things that in the end can show my true value as a person. For one, I want to be a family man. While this is something so far down the road, I really want it. I look to my grandfather, my father, my mother, family means everything to them. My mother has told my sister and me that both of us are her life. I want to have that same experience. I want to share my love with someone and take care of them and help them grow into a person that they can be proud of. As for humanity, I can only hope that my children will have a huge impact. I don’t mean that I want them to necessarily create Utopia, but I want them to have an impact on the world in anyway they see fit. I want to have children so they can receive the same amazing feeling I do after I have helped another. I want them to be proud to make an impact.

This world is filled with the words I want and “gotta haves” and most of the time people are referring to material items that change with the passing of the wind. I don’t want money, but I want to have a job that I am happy everyday that I have. My grandfather as I mentioned had his store, for me, right now I want to be a politician. While in today’s world politicians are considered corrupt and even sometimes “flip-floppers”, I want to make a difference. I want to have this in life, so I can have an affect on the lives of others. I know I could be a doctor, or a teacher, and those are fine professions, but I want one that has a grand affect on all people, one that can truly bring great prosperity and eventually happiness.

The last three things I want in life I will group all together. One, I want to possess the knowledge of multiple languages. I feel the world is too small for me not too. As I have grown, I feel that Orange is truly a gated community, what better way for me to truly experience and be able to help others than know what they are saying and here what they have to say. Language can be a great divider of people as we see with the Tower of Babel, but if I could speak many, I could bridge that divide. Another thing I want to have is something a little abstract. I want to have made an impact on someone’s life. I don’t mean I want to force someone to respect me, but I want to find some way to bring light to another. I teach leadership training to Boy Scouts across the state and this is one way I contribute. I do it to give these boys the same confidence I once gained when I went through the course. I want to have that same ability somehow in some capacity. I want to be able to influence others in a way that they can be proud of themselves. The final thing I wish to possess is a sense of dignity. When I pass on, I want to know in my heart that I did everything in power to leave an impact. I do not need any title, I do not need fame, what is in a name really anyway. At the end of the day, all I want really is a sense of accomplishment. I simply want to be happy and I want to make others happy. I want it so very badly. So, in order to do so, I leave you with this.

THE TRUE MEANING OF LIFE…

Monty Python and the Meaning of Life
Lady Presenter: Well, that's the end of the film. Now, here's the meaning of life.
[Receives an envelope]
Lady Presenter: Thank you, Brigitte.
[Opens envelope, reads what's inside]
Lady Presenter: M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.

[Large corporate boardroom filled with suited executives]
Exec #1: Item six on the agenda: "The Meaning of Life" Now uh, Harry, you've had some thoughts on this.
Exec #2: Yeah, I've had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and what we've come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts. One: People aren't wearing enough hats. Two: Matter is energy. In the universe there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person's soul. However, this "soul" does not exist ab initio as orthodox Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved owing to man's unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.
Exec #3: What was that about hats again?
Exec #2: Oh, Uh... people aren't wearing enough.
Exec #1: Is this true?
Exec #4: Certainly. Hat sales have increased but not pari passu, as our research...
Exec #3: [Interrupting] "Not wearing enough"? enough for what purpose?
Exec #5: Can I just ask, with reference to your second point, when you say souls don't develop because people become distracted...
[looking out window]
Exec #5: Has anyone noticed that building there before?

And finally…