Free Way the Crow Flies by Ann-marie MacDonald

and management—it’s all covered. There is even an exchange arrangement with the MBA program at the University of Western Ontario in London. There are Technical, Language, Finance, Management and Basic Officer Training sections, as well as an Office of Training Standards. Just about everything there is to know about the air force, apart from flying an airplane. Ground training.
    He reshelves
Administration
between
Finance
and
Discipline
. He opens his desk drawers. Stray paper clips, elastic bands. A hefty stapler, tablets of lined yellow paper. A brass pencil sharpener in the shape of an airplane. He spins the tiny propeller.
    Thanks to the air force, Jack got his MBA at one of the finest schools in the world—a single eye-straining year at the University of Michigan. He could earn better than double out in the civilian world—on civvie street. His job here is, in civilian terms, a management position comparable to a corporate executive vice-president in charge of operations. He will report directly to the CO, his time his own to organize as he sees fit. He is, for all intents and purposes, his own boss.
    As such, Jack has devised a couple of rules for himself. Ask before telling. And listen more than you talk. His job is to know what everyone else’s job is, to get everyone pointed in the right direction and then get out of the way. He’s bound to encounter some resistance—resistance to change is only human—but if he listens, he’ll find out what ain’t broke and doesn’t need fixing. And if he asks the right questions, his subordinates will tell him what he would otherwise have to tell them. Like many effective managers, he’ll appearnot to be working at all. Jack smiles to himself and reaches in his inside pocket for a folded personnel list. Rule number three: learn the names.
    The next thing he’ll do is seek out the station warrant officer—the equivalent of a factory superintendent, the fella who knows what makes the whole place tick, technically subordinate to Jack but in reality ranked just below God—and say hello. Jack consults his list: Warrant Officer Pinder. He refolds the list.
    The third thing: Friday beer call at the officers’ mess. All the news that’s neither fit to print nor to speak aloud at a meeting will come out at these bull sessions. Jack only ever has one, maybe two beers, keeps his ear to the ground and enjoys himself thoroughly, standing around with the rest of the gentlemen and rogues, “telling lies.”
    Over the course of his first week he will study personnel files. He’ll consult them the way a pilot consults a map before a mission. The paper acts as a guide but should never be confused with the real thing. Behind every name, rank and serial number is a human being. Barking orders may work in battle but gets you nowhere in peace-time.
    And Jack is acutely aware that the Western world is in one of the longest stretches of peace and prosperity in its history. Not to mention anxiety. Everyday life resembles a hot-air balloon floating in a clear summer sky—it looks effortless from the ground, yet it’s fed by fire, kept aloft by tension. Jack recalls his daughter’s morbid reference to “melted skin.” He and Mimi do their best to prevent their kids from dwelling on the threat, but in 4 Wing they, like the other air force families, stored a week’s supply of food and water in the basement locker of their PMQ; there was an evacuation plan, and regular drills at the children’s school. Part of life. The Cold War has escalated, marshalling unprecedented destructive force, most of which operates as an elaborate deterrent and requires a large bureaucracy to administer it. This is a war that is not so much waged as managed.
    He pulls a frayed textbook from the shelf:
Principles of Management: A Practical Approach
. We can do better than that. He has begun to assemble his own management text, a compilation of the latest articles coming out of the States, places like Harvard