Head Tale

I attended the Saskatchewan Book Awards last Saturday night and since it was the Saskatchewan Publishers Group that first got me involved with that organization, I thought this would be a good time to post the third part of a series I'm doing on the main things I learned from the various jobs I've held in my life. 

Here are links to the first two:
1. Indian Head Esso (High School)

2. Image Cable Systems (Undergrad)

For this third post, I'll look at my first “real” job after I convocated with a BA – English in 1997.  A few months after graduating, not having found work in my area of specialization, I was chosen for a work training & placement program called the Graduate Employment & Mentorship Program.  (At the time there wasn't a co-op program for Arts students so in some ways, that's what this program felt like.)  We did a month or so of work skills training – everything from learning our Myers-Briggs personality types (ENFP ) to improving our resume writing skills to public speaking. 

That was useful but more importantly, the program also offered a three-month paid work placement which had the potential to be the proverbial “foot in the door” for an area where you'd like to work.  I met with the coordinator of the GEM program and remember saying “I'm interested in a few different areas – journalism, the media, working with books, writing, marketing, web site design.”  (Interestingly given my current career, I don't think I mentioned libraries.  Or if I did, it wasn't the main area I expressed an interest in.) 

Little did I know how that brief interview would impact my working life for nearly the next decade.  I interviewed for two different jobs that were posted – one was a researcher/writer on a book that would be a guide to Saskatchewan's parks and the other would be a position shared between two organizations – creating a web site for the Saskatchewan Publishers Group and updating the existing site of the Saskatchewan Library Association – with the majority of my time spent with the SPG. 

Thinking that the latter would be more interesting and provide more marketable skills once the placement was up, that was the one I chose.  But instead of moving on after the funding ended as was the case with most GEM placements, the SPG was able to hire me on an additional contract for a few more months.  Then another one.  Then I did a couple short contracts for some other cultural non-profits connected to the SPG before they were able to hire me back as a full-time employee (well, not quite – see #1 below!)  So except for a couple months, I basically stayed with the SPG from 1997 to 2001 when Shea and I moved to Alberta. 

We'd always planned to move back to Saskatchewan and it was a vacancy at the SPG – not my previous job but of that of a co-worker I'd previously worked with – that brought me back to my home province. 

Both because it was my first “real” job and also because, as of today, I've spent more years at the SPG than any other workplace, it's probably had the single biggest impact on me in terms of what I was able to learn and what I've come to believe a great workplace can be. 

1.  Treat Employees Right
Due to a very progressively minded Exectuive Director and supportive board, this was a huge factor that underlined everything that was done at the SPG and therefore has had a huge influence on how I view employee relations in other workplaces.  From every employee working a four-day workweek so as to provide for a better work-life balance to regular birthday lunches for all staff paid for by the SPG to having very generous vacation benefits (three weeks to start going up to four after three years' service, five after another three and topping out at six after another three, it was almost…European…in how our holidays were structured!  Oh, did I mention we also got a paid week at Christmas on top of everything else?  Yep!  So a nine year employee could enjoy seven weeks of holidays each year!  I used to think that these perks were a trade-off for not being able to pay as well as the private sector or even other public sector organizations but I later learned that most other cultural non-profits didn't do these types of things for their employees (and probably didn't pay as well as the SPG) either!

2.  Do One Thing Every Day
I was frustrated one day about the amount of things I was trying to do early in my tenure and my boss pointed out a very simple idea – “don't try to do everything – instead, do one thing every day”.  Obviously, that didn't mean you write one report or whatever then head for the bar.  But the idea was that you should aim to *complete* something every day, no matter how big or small, to give yourself a sense of accomplishment – a very valuable koan I still use to this day.

3.  Trust Employees
Partly due to personality and partly due to the fact that there wasn't time to closely monitor the work of employees if she was going to get her own work done, my boss was very hands-off and also displayed a great deal of trust – whether it was entrusting a fresh out of college graduate in his early 20's with a huge database project (note: this site isn't my original design – it's been greatly improved since I left the SPG), agreeing to have me sit on the board of a province-wide organization or sending me to national conferences to represent your organization.

4.  Potpourri 
Again, perhaps because of the small size of the organization, I feel like I got such a wide exposure to so many different areas that someone who began their working life as a specialist in a much larger organization might never touch.  Things like: how to write a grant application.  Basic bookkeeping.  Creating a budget.  Board relations as a employee.  Board relations as a board member.  Writing policy.  Writing job descriptions.  Hiring.  (And again on the trust note, I always appreciated that anytime we hired, all three employees were eligible to sit in on the interviews as my boss was very conscious that as a small organization, finding someone who was a good fit personality-wise was as important as whatever skills and experience the person might bring.)  Event planning.  Marketing.  Web design.  Graphic design and layout.  Presenting.  Instruction.  Dealing with retailers.  Funder relations.  Government relations.  Etc, etc. etc.  I wasn't an expert in any of these areas (okay, maybe web design – but it was 1997 – if you got some words on the Internet, you were a genius.  If you could put a picture beside them, you were a god!) but I had enough exposure to learn at least a little bit of each of these areas. 

5.  You Can't Go Home Again
As I mentioned, it was a vacancy at the SPG that brought me home from Alberta in 2005.  Unfortunately, the organization was undergoing a lot of turmoil at the time (my former co-worker whose job I stepped into had been taking money from the organization and was fired.  I knew that in advance but it still had a big effect on the morale of everybody who'd worked with her for years.  In addition, the SPG was undergoing not one but two federal audits, my boss was involved in a relationship with someone overseas so was frequently away for long periods of time, my other co-worker was going on a maternity leave and the organization wanted to bridge her position due to its financial crunch which meant it often fe
lt like I was the only employee in what was normally a three-person office.  Add in the personal stresses of leaving my job with the Writers Guild of Alberta (when I was at the SPG, I thought I'd never find a better job in my life.  Then I came to the WGA and it was even better than the SPG in some ways.  That made it harder to go back to the SPG having seen a different management style and a different way of running an organization) as well as moving between provinces and house-hunting.  I lasted for a year back at the SPG before deciding that it was time to do something different in my life.  I quit without really having a plan of what I'd do next (something I think everyone should do once in their life! ), applied for library school and here I am, a couple short years later – feeling like I finally have a long-term career in a way that I never felt when I worked in the cultural non-profit sector – no matter how much I enjoyed that work.  I think that's because it always seemed to be a constant battle for funding and having to do things on a shoestring.  It was also frustrating that the opportunities to move laterally or upwards were often quite limited.   (I do miss the four day workweeks and the 5+1 weeks of vacation that I'd built up though!) 

Next time:  Five Things I Learned Working for the Writers Guild of Alberta