The junior employee inhabits a precarious role.
You must wrap your head around complex processes that have become second nature to others. You need to assess the culture of the workplace and find your place within it. You want to convey confidence and originality but avoid appearing overly dogmatic or potentially too assertive.
Finally, if you’re working on a newsletter, it would be best not to send an unfinished version to close to 1000 subscribers.
If that last point sounds oddly specific, it’s because it happened to me.
This newsletter (it happened to be the year-in-review newsletter) summarises significant moments for the business. It includes a review of some of our favourite projects we’ve brought to life for our clients, a run-down of some of Barbara’s speaking engagements, events we sponsored, the introduction of new clients, industry recognition and a recap of our favourite pieces on the blog.
It’s an opportunity to reflect on our work and offer a humble brag of our successes to those who care. We are representing ourselves as an agency who use the power of communications for good; as an agency that helps businesses to tell their stories and to do so with the highest sense of professionalism. This is what our clients expect and what we expect of ourselves. So naturally all our communications ideally marry up with these expectations.
When I hit send on an unfinished document and the friendly (smug, self-satisfied) Mailchimp monkey excitedly informed me that it had been sent to 880 people I was pretty terrified. My version was a mess. There were formatting errors, an unfinished title and a slab of missing information…. I was alone at the office. It was just me and the monkey.
Our office is two stories high so jumping would be just insufficient. I’d need at least six. After anxiously pacing I resolved to call my colleagues. Their responses were calm and measured yet harboured an unmistakable sense of disappointment. The consensus was there was nothing to be done now and that we’d discuss processes tomorrow.
The following day, after awakening from a host of nightmares, I went to work to await my fate.
To my great relief, the issue was approached with compassion and maturity. “People make mistakes,” I was reminded. “What can we do to make sure this doesn’t happen again?” I was asked. It was relieving to approach the issue with such pragmatism. We discussed processes to put in place to avoid making a mistake like this again.
I created instructions for Mailchimp EDM processes and a colleague created a new default email list of Pesel & Carr staff so that emails would be sent there instead of to all contacts. The official piece was finalised and sent out. Finally, I suggested I write this piece. A chance to meditate on what happened and throw in a couple jokes about it to make me feel less guilty.
I’d like to acknowledge the patience and maturity shown by my colleagues and to remind myself that mistakes are in fact valuable lessons. And I’ve learnt mine. Hopefully that monkey never laughs at me again.
