Yesterday we had a leaving party for our Operations Manager.
I hope he won't mind me saying his name because - hmm he's already an international dive celebrity amongst our regular customers and also has his face plastered all over our website, but Friday (a long term nickname, rather like "Crowley"!
) was, quite simply the best manager I have ever worked for.
Throughout my former life as an IT specialist I had a lot of different managers over the years, and what I learned (and this applies to many different walks of like not just IT or diving) was this: Managers either (a ) do not have in-depth knowledge of what it is that the people that they manage do, or (b) have an in-depth knowledge of the subject matter but couldn't manage their way around a
Take the last manager I had in the IT industry: Really nice guy, looked a lot like he was born to be an accountant, in fact indeed he *was* an accountant before he became a manager of things, and was caught up in a generation of point-and-clicky morons whose idea of network security was putting a password on their screensaver. He just managed people - and actually he only had to manage two people - me in charge of systems and my colleague on the help-desk; we managed our own departments, he shuffled paper around and occasionally updated the director on very little of any significance other than the amount of money involved. He knew almost nothing about what I was doing, and this was part of the instigation of my journey into life as a transient dive bum.
Friday, on the other hand, is one of those rare people who not only has the wit, charisma, intelligence and authority to manage an entire dive centre, but he was also a dive guide here in Sharm for almost ten years and therefore understands intimately how the various groups and factions function together - by which I mean not just the Europeans and the Egyptians but also how guides and instructors interact with the counter staff and the office girls, as well as the tank boys, bus drivers and boat captains.
Many dive centres have managers that were never really "hands-on" - sure they might be instructors but they never really worked as an instructor, just slipped straight into management because it was a pre-requisite for the job. They have overall targets that must be met, and they think that by imposing a certain regime over their staff, they can more easily meet those targets, regardless of how the staff - who are at the business end of the stick and effectively cannon-fodder when it all goes pear-shaped - feel about this.
As the average customer, you would probably never notice, but behind-the-scenes is where a dive centre is really driven, and management changes at other big-name dive centres over the last couple of years have resulted in a certain dynamism of job location when staff have disagreed with implemented changes.
Complaints are made against us all the time - too much current, not enough sharks, too much sand, dived the same spectacular dive site two times in the same holiday - etc. If there's a genuine complaint to be made then it will of course be addressed and dealt with appropriately - but the management of my dive centre do not take the opinion that "the customer is always right" - because actually, at least in my world, that's a very rare thing. Friday had a really great way of both backing us up and turning the customer around so that all parties remain content.
Friday gave me my big break in Sharm - and a large part of the reason that my colleagues and I work for this dive centre is because of him. Big shoes to fill. I hope they don't get stepped in by a small person.
Cheers Friday...!
C.
