COLUMN: Who are you comfortable leaving it with?

I looked a little deeper into the absence of head coach Kirk Ferentz from Iowa’s first football game of the season on Saturday.

The longest tenured coach in college football, Ferentz sat out the game because of a recruiting violation he admitted. My depth is not because of what he did, although being punished more than 18 months after the infraction is another story about the NCAA’s disappointing procedures. My focus was on a coach leaving a major college football program in the hands of others for one game.

Some commentary leading up to Iowa’s game alluded to what the game would be like without him. A majority of Ferenetz’ coaching staff has been with him for many years. They know the strategies, game plans, players and everything else. Or they should know. Would the game have been the same with Ferentz there?

I do wonder if business owners, preferably those who do the “work” and not only administrative things, have thought about who they trust should something happen to them and they have to be out of the operation for X amount of time.

A majority of my career has been in smaller operations; small enough to know and feel it when someone is gone, for whatever reason, for an amount of time. What helps, specifically for vacation time, is having a number of stories done in advance. Those stories are not timely, either. That has been a good strategy.

There is more to it than the actual work. What about the ethic and willpower of the other people? Just because you leave them a story, someone else still has to show up and place it on the page.

I have told the others in the newsroom; Mandy, Cheyenne, Erin and Nick that I wouldn’t want them here if I didn’t trust them. Sounds cliche, but still works. I don’t feel like I have to be part of every decision made for every newspaper, because I trust them. The same goes for Candra in Osceola and Caleb in Greenfield and I don’t see them every day.

Here in Creston, Fridays seem to be the quietest day of the week in the newsroom. I really think it became even more that way after our production schedule change a year ago.

But there is still the surprise news that happens; the beauty and curse of the business. Whoever is here on a Friday afternoon, and sometimes that is the only person in the newsroom, I think any of them could handle a breaking story. We don’t know when the fire department gets called to a house fire. We don’t know when law enforcement is on the hunt for a suspect. We don’t know when guns will be pulled, let alone fired, in public settings. And if someone else from the newsroom gets called to assist, I don’t see it as a weakness. I see it as it’s a bigger story than one person should handle.

Advice given to me early in my career was, “The president and the Pope are meeting for coffee in your town. You are the only one who will observe and write the story as it will be shared with every other news outlet.” I trust each of them to do that.

It would be fascinating to know the thoughts of other managers and their perceptions on their staff, especially when they are gone.

During my career I have come across the person who is Type A and thinks they have to be part of every decision and if they don’t do it, it won’t get done right. That’s a lot of baggage to carry everyday. The occasional survey shows how not every American worker uses all of their vacation time. Is that because they don’t want someone else doing the work?

It can get personal, too.

A couple of years ago I had some conversations with an attorney who deals with contracts and agreements. The attorney’s work was heavy in the next generation taking over family farms.

Just for conversation sake, the farm has been around for past generations, and has done well; equipment and the entire property are in great shape. It’s still a viable, productive operation. The grandparents’ desire to have the farm continue well into the next generation or generations.

But the younger generation is in the unknown. A couple of the kids left the farm and are doing well. The others stayed close to home, in a literal sense, and are making the farm still produce Iowa’s gold in corn, beans and livestock. Grandchildren have shown interest, but do they have the skill and work ethic? The grandparents know there may be some uncomfortable feelings if those who stayed get more than those who left.

Will the farm continue to produce or will the disagreements over who got what be a distraction, and more importantly, a problem to the farm? How confident are we knowing how much we leave something else to continue?