“Adelheim, the Torch is Passing to YOU!”

Sounds easy, right?

On the track team I ran in the mile relay. There are four runners, each of whom runs a quarter of a mile and then passes the baton on to the next runner. I was not a championship runner, but I was ASTONISHED to discover that, even on COLLEGE teams, the baton got dropped.

I doubt a single team that dropped a single baton ever won the relay. It costs SECONDS, and in a relay a single second is usually decisive. As the exhausted runner comes in, you must start running, get to full speed, and take the baton out of his hand. You must get started up to full speed and get that stick just at the right moment.

When you drop it, it makes you look a bungling amateur, the way an Olympic skater looks stupid when they fall on their ass in the middle of a routine that would have put a mere professional on their backside long since.

Passing the torch is hard. TAKING the torch is harder.

Adelheim sent me a PM on SF that led me to put the last entry in here.

What he is doing is translating the Mantra. That I will deal with last, because, if you read the peices below, you will realize this is deadly serious WORK. Our message IS our work.

We must formulate it and TRY it. You cannot imagine how great it is for me not to be doing this alone.

In response to his PM I asked Adelheim to put the comment HERE rahter than in a private PM so I wouldn’t have to go back and forth and check ut what I could quote here. This is SEMINAR business.

Adelheim did more than that. He put the comment here and then wrote me a PM telling me WHERE it was.

He then ended by quoting my words, “Adelheim, the Torch is Passing to YOU!”

He is taking that torch cery well. You see, Adelheim has been reading my ravings here and he knows one problem I have that escapes the notice of others. I clear comments and then I can’t FIND them. They all come together and by the time I want to get to them I have to guess which article it was a comment on. So Adelheim let me know.

As it happens, I had just done the exact same thing he was anticipating. I had cleared his comment and couldn’t FIND it.

There is a more general point here. One of the main things a Big Chief staffer for a busy man must do is look at the world from HIS point of view. You don’t sit around worrying whether his last comment to you was a hint that your mother is ugly. You don’t sit around worrying what he may ask you.

YOU work for HIM. If he asks you something, you just answer honestly. The answer is often, “I didn’t do that. I’m sorry. I will.”

He doesn’t care WHY.

Write while he is talking or as soon as you leave his office. What HE told you is the ONLY important thing going on. I only went back to him when I HAD to or when the job was done and he may want to give me more instructions.

In mid-project, fi I HAD to get back to him, I would usually write a short paragraph reminding him what he asked me to do. He is is lliterally dealing with ahundred other things and no matter how senior a staffer I am, that particular subject will not jump to his mind.

If wht I have to say does not leap to mind the moment he sees me or my note, I am not supposd to get under my bed and suck my thumb because it doesn’t and he doesn’t appreciate me.

Some do.

HE or SHE, the person I am working for, needs a quick reminder of what the subject is, what I was supposed to do, then what I found out so far and a QUICK summary of what I need HIM to decide.

Then comes the most important piece of punctuation there is in dealing with a busy, important person:

PERIOD.

He is not fascinated by how hard I looked for something. He MAY need to be told whether it CAN be found or not. That’s what he’s paying YOU for.

He is not interested in side subjects, no matter how fascinating. If they get that interesting, I’ll send him another note or see him about THAT subject. Otherwise you must assume he has subjects of his own to deal with.

He takes two minutes, checks one of the options I put there, and can then drop it in his Out box. I am flattered to say that all of them usually called in his Office Manager and said, “Get this to Bob.” I considered his time, he considered mine.

REAGAN did that once, and the whole office was jealous.

Management and doing a good job consists largely at looking at things from the other person’s point of view. The people who talk about that seldom practice it.

NOT SPAM
NOT SPAM

“I noticed they and my answers seemed to have disappeared, but my initial Mantra post remained.”

Peter, would it be possible for you to show how you answer the, “I don’t know anyone advocating non-white immigration/assimilation…” objection? If we could put that alongside the Mantra for a fast cut and paste it would speed things up and make it harder for our posters to get “off message.”

I’ve asked Bob a time or two to put the Heresy piece below the Mantra on his Mantra page but so far he hasn’t had time — or else I haven’t found it. If we had the 1.)Mantra, 2.) Who’s advocating this?, and the 3.) Heresy Response within reach it may make things more efficient and get more of us posting.

BTW, good work!

ME:

Mark is doing it right. If I don’t answer a pit you need answering, REMIND me. If you don’t feel I am addressing somebody adquately or or rightly, bite your pack leader on the tail.

I am getting CONSTRUCTIVE suggestions from you. You are necouraging EACH OTHER and leaving it all to me. I haven’t seen this sort of thing in fifty years of trying.

Mean, moan, there has GOT to be something WRONG here. My first thought is htat you are all agents snert by the Secret Service of the Planet Xenon.

You came BACK with something critical. How else would I KNOW that so many people in Europe may not have heard the exact words “race problem?”

Mark, the Mantra nad HERESY! did not spring out of my typewriter fully grown, as you well know. They are so good htat nobody NOTICES it outside our little circle.

But now I am going to try grind out what you ask for with the hundred rewrites to cut it down, cut it down, cut it down, and to make it unanswerable.