I have no idea how I got this, but here it is, a men’s magazine, Best Life.  I’m getting a subscription for some odd reason, based on the label that appears on this issue.  Who knows, maybe my mom did a boo-boo and bought it for me for Christmas instead of my spouse.

Umm, thanks, Mom…

Last night I actually read it, having misplaced a book I meant to take with me to my son’s sports class.  Make no mistake; Best Life is a Maxim wannabe, nearly identical content for the young American male with somewhat less female flesh pasted all over it.  It’s annoyingly hyper-consumerist, but then so are a lot of other magazines that target the 20-40 year-old gender-specific group.

Reading (rather, browsing) through its glossy pulp occupied me long enough to get through the sports class.  As I waited for the kids to pick up their gear and wrap up, I found myself on the last page, reading an overview about Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

Of the questions put to Fiennes in this overview, one particularly engaged me.  He was asked what rule he never breaks.

“When putting together a team, take people who have the right character even if they don’t have the skills.  You can teach skills, but you can’t change character.”

How utterly true.

As a project manager I had teams that were assigned to me; I could not choose the members.  Yet whenever there was a pinch in the project and I needed someone who would resolve it, I would pick from within the assigned group a team member with character every time.  It’s not something one verbalizes often in team meetings; it’s subtle how this works in group dynamics, this invisible and not-quite-conscious selection of the person who’ll get it done and then some.

During a particularly grueling project, I had a certain team member that always went the distance and beyond; he had a can-do attitude, would hunt down, find and implement a solution no matter what got in his way.  He always managed to win over the client with excellence, delivering more and better than they had anticipated.  He was a project manager’s dream.

His counterpart, on the other hand, couldn’t be left alone without supervision.  Even with encouragement and specific benchmarked objectives in defined time spans, he could not do a fraction of the work required.  Both of these guys came from similar backgrounds, similar educations; they were nearly the same age within a day or two.  They had the same training, same level of experience on the job.

But one of them simply had no heart.  No character. 

With the project reaching a critical point, I had to remove the guy without character.  He was a drain on the rest of the team, actually costing us resources.  We worked better and faster without him on board.  It wasn’t an easy thing to do.  He worked cheek-and-jowl in the same cube farm with the rest of the team and would remain in the same space – just assigned to another, less demanding project and a different project manager.  He wondered why I cut him, and I had to tell him that I simply needed more than he was able to give us.  Of course, this made no sense to him.  I never replaced him on the team, how could I need more?  I spelled it out as best I could without telling him to his face that he was dead weight – but he still didn’t get it.

After reading about Fiennes and his book excerpt, I can understand his adherence to this never-broken rule.  Would I have trusted my life in the hands of my team member sans character?

Hell no.  And I certainly wouldn’t trust my career to them.

I might actually look forward to the next issue of Best Life.  I can do without its crappy content like “Buy yourself a jet on the cheap!” or the equally cheesy, “How to rev up your sex life!” …especially the bit this month that whined about life balance. 

But a tiny little nugget that gives pause for reflection?   For free?

Yeah.  Bring it on.

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What pulpy pop magazine(s) do you read?  What do you get out of them besides guilty pleasure?  What’s the best thing you ever got out of a magazine?  Fill me in; I am all ears.

12:36:44 PM    comment []