What do great assistants do?
At 24, my father owned his first restaurant. The first Chinese delivery spot in downtown Albany, with stats like quote you’d get off the phone with Lee Fong and the delivery boy was ringing your doorbell unquote. When five p.m. came ‘round, it was sweet ‘n sour and Moo Shu out the wazoo. And my father, he’d storm the kitchen, up to his nostrils in hand-scribbled orders, and 1X1 he’d Gatling gun it to his partner and chef, Sam.
As quick as he shouted orders, Sam prepped the ingredients into wire handled white boxes. His hands dove in and out of his prep fridge like a conductor’s stroking his orchestra into the climax. No premeasured portions, this wasn’t no Subway operation run by teeny boppers paid minimum wage to pretend to be sandwich artists. Fresh broccoli crowns and snappy peapods and crisp baby corn was weighed by their texture against your palm, by their feel, not by numbers on a scale. Sauces didn’t come in La Choy glass bottles, they were recreated from pinches and dashes of soy, sesame oil, ketchup, salt, sugar, mirin. Nothing written down, nothing completely standardized. Every improvised off the top.
Ticket minders lined every wall, and by five thirteen, white tickets with mental math computed totals surrounded my father. He and Sam were very fast, very smart. Both retained information like a sponge retains E. coli. But those qualities alone didn’t make them a good team. That wasn’t what made them a success.
Anticipation made them a success. My father didn’t just read the orders; he watched Sam, constantly aware of how fast he was packing, that if he was packing Orange Chicken, he only memorized the next seven dishes and he forgot there were two Kung Pao dishes, not one. It was a jazz duo between the two, never missing a beat even as they trampled notes and forgot orders, because at the end of a string of tickets, Sam would ask, “What did I forget?”
And my father knew. No hesitation, straight off the top.
The story sticks, on this slow descent towards Santa Monica Blvd, after day one on a manager’s desk, my introduction on How to be an Assistant. It sticks because amidst the coagulated information on the brain stem, the major takeaway, the 90 to the 90/10 is: great people anticipate. Don’t matter the industry, of food or film, the most important skill is the ability to anticipate the needs of the people around you. That’s what makes someone an asset to cause and company. Anticipation.
It’s not some voodoo extra sensory perception, neither – no ting-tangling spidey-sense alerting you of lasers or sentient metal claws in the immediate vicinity. Good anticipation is measurable. Actionable. It’s work and research and focus on the details that directly affect you. The other components of a good assistant: phones mechanics, conferences and schedules and messengering, how fast you read and write; all trimmings. Anticipation, attention to detail, that’s the turkey. Not just saying it, not just putting on the resume because it sounds good. Living it, breathing it, delivering on it:
What’s on next week’s schedule? Next month’s? What meetings must The Big Cheese take? With whom, pertaining to what deals? Where and at what time is each of these meeting? How many glances and double-checks till you’re positive? Are you confident enough to schedule appointments on the fly, Blackberry unattached to fist, and without a peek at Outlook?
How far back have you read their e-mail? What projects are in the works? Are you researching everyone in the phone log: who they are, who they work for, what’s their relationship to your employer? Are you building your own mental dossier of the people in the business? Why not?
Who are the clients? Who are the important clients? How does he speak to them when he’s got them on the phone?
Do you know when to interrupt? Which calls to give him when says, “no calls?” After your third reminder of who he owes, do you know who he’ll actually return to and who he won’t?
Who is the competition? What is their relationship to these people?
The assistant position isn’t a fair one. It’s not fair to get dumped on with miscellaneous chore, to take on work outside of the job description, or to get screamed at for failure to communicate, especially when the failure happened on someone else’s end. It isn’t fair that mind reading is required to succeed as an assistant. But since when was any aspect of this industry fair? Agents and managers get paid to make deals, not have myelin coated communication channels. That’s what the assistant is for.
It can be frustrating, thankless work, executing the duties of an assistant at this standard. It’s easy to ask, “Is it worth it?” especially if joining the ranks of the Masters of the Universe isn’t the end goal. Why kill yourself in this role if it’s not the angle you want to break into the industry?
Because people don’t align themselves with you because you’re acute or obtuse. They get on your side because they see you’re smart, that you’re going to be a success. And an IVY league diploma is hardly a guarantee of that. Getting the small details correct, following up on the miniscule, is.
Nailing the small details is the only way to prove you can handle the big ones.
Photo Credit: David Wheeler
