Years ago, I worked for The Asahi Shimbun, the second biggest newspaper in the world. It was selling 9 million copies every day at the time. (The Yomiuri Shimbun was even bigger, but considered down-market and tabloidish, while the Asahi was -- and probably still is -- more traditional, upright and proud of its standards.)Al Belli wrote:The relationship between management and worker need not be adverserial.
Working hours were totally crazy -- basically you worked until the job was done, regardless of how long it took. I was really shocked at first. I mean, you do expect a three-day job to be broken into three parts, with two sleep periods in between. You can’t quite believe your boss will really expect you to work three days straight. Then you discover your boss things nothing of it.
But, you know what – I LOVED it. I did it for three years and it was the best employment I have ever had (not counting my own businesses). I loved my first boss, now one of the very senior political editors at the central Tokyo office of the paper, and respected the guys who came after him. I worked with five and deeply respected every single one of them.
Why did I love it? Because it made sense. My bosses expected me to be intelligent and visibly appreciated it when I actually was. We worked like idiots when there was work to be done, but we NEVER did make-work. If there was no work, we loafed and had fun and games and chatted and had good time. Or we slept.
When I was swamped with work and my boss wasn’t, he would brew coffee for me and make me sandwiches. When I told my first boss I felt strange being served by him, he taught me a very important lesson. He said, you know, Bruno, managers are generators of cost. Workers are generators of income. If I am not helping you generate income, I only generate costs. If I did that, I would not last long at my job. “A manager is a helper to his workers,â€