Locality Switch

My tenure as Technical Manager at 2CCRfm 90.5 is coming to an end. Earlier this month, I notified station management that I will be finishing up at the end of June. This will end almost three years as a technical volunteer at the organisation. I have learnt a tremendous amount of things, have met some great people, and generally had a good time.

Why am I leaving? It all comes down to time, and a desire to focus on something different. After spending so long working at this one organisation, having everyone relying on my to keep things running, I feel that I need to do something else with the precious time I have. A change of scenery, so to speak.

With the somewhat sad (but yet exciting!) final day approaching, I have been pondering: What could I have done better? If I was to do it again, what would I do differently? Do I have any regrets?

One of things I would have done differently is to be more of a team player. The way things panned out was that I did the majority of the work, and then others around me try and catch up. I very rarely delegated tasks to others, even when they were capable to do them. At first, this didn’t pose many problems, but as the station grew and people changed, it became more and more of an issue.

I could always manage to find a way to get the technology working properly, and doing what I wanted, but as a manager of other people, I fell short. Through the recent circumstances, I’ve been made aware of this. If I was to do it all again, this I would be more conscious about, and I would defiantly act differently.

Another thing I would do differently is to have a clearer plan of where we are heading. Often, due to the chaos of the moment, we were stuck in the mindset of “okay, we need to fix this NOW”, not able to see ahead and plan anything for the future. The problem with this, especially when dealing with technology, is that you often end up duplicating yourself. There needs to be a plan as to what changes should be done in the next year, etc. in order not to replace things multiple times, or reconfigure something only to have it superseded by some other magical device.

Finally, I would make sure I say “I don’t know” more often. I got into this terrible habit of thinking I knew the answer to everything, and when I didn’t, I would lie until I could work out what the answer was. Sometimes this wasn’t such a big a deal; other times it was.

Even after listing these things I would change, I don’t think I have any regrets. What I did was always what I thought was the best action for the moment. I was thrown into the “deep end” at age 14, and now that I’m approaching 17, I’m much wiser. Still a long way to got, I admit, but this has probably been one of the best things I’ve been a part of. The learning is ongoing.