One Life

Yesterday I escaped the Onelife office to wander around the offices of Youthwork Magazine and Premier Christian Radio – with Sarah Wynter as my guide, and armed with my usual detective cunning, I ventured forth to suss out the workings of the machine that is Youthwork.

If you’re like me, most of the time when you’re got something like Youthwork Magazine in your hand, you have no idea how it got there. Sure you’ve picked it up, but that’s the easy part. I got the opportunity to see behind closed doors – to see all the work that had to be done: planning, writing, editing, and that’s just for the articles.

I met the some of the people who work away at the essential but unseen aspects of magazine production. My hero of the day was Mark – the guy who works in advertising. It turns out that a lot of the pressure is on the people who find the advertising, much more that you’d expect. I have huge respect for Mark, mostly because his is probably the last job in the world that I would want, but he’s faithfully plugging away at it, just living through the pressure, and doing a great job.

When you’re standing in the middle of offices like Youthwork and Premier, with the financial guys on your left, the web wizards and advertising people on your right and the editors around the corner, you suddenly realise that teams are not just a good idea. It doesn’t matter how great a leader you are – you could never do all this stuff. If you want to pull off something like Youthwork Magazine, with the high standard it sets, you will need a team. In fact, whatever you want to do – if you want it to be excellent and sustainable – you will need a team. It turns out that leadership isn’t a one man show.