Hello!...

I'm retired from a career writing technical research materials. The last 12 years in the business I was executive editor leading a team of people who were a helluva lot smarter than I am. My world was the opposite of creative writing, but there's lots of crossover. Much of my perspective comes from training people how to lay golden eggs.

 

If I lay those golden eggs in warm sand and let the sun incubate them, will they hatch golden lizards? Asking for a friend.

Welcome to the forum from me too.

 

Thanks!

Actually, no, I'm from Illinois not France. The Beaujolais name is one I made up. My real name is very boring.

Teaching geese how to lay golden eggs. For the first several years of my career there were only two of us on the full time writing staff. We did quite well, then split off to start our own publishing company. The other writer and I had spirited discussions about whether we could train writers to do what we were doing. He said if someone had it, they had it, and no amount of training could make a writer if they didn't have it to begin with. I argued that we could train people if we found good people to begin with. I was given a budget to recruit, hire, train, and manage a writing staff, and it wasn't long before it paid off. We vastly increased our product line and took the company to the next level. The Negative Nellie never bought into the program and gradually isolated himself from the rest of the editorial staff, working alone on ancillary projects.

I've participated in discussion forums relating to business and employment. The subject of an employee being asked by the company to train new employees came up fairly often. So many people would say something like, "Don't train someone else to do your job. That will make you less valuable." That's where I came up with the phrase, "Who's more valuable..."

I'd argue in favor of teaching someone else to trade something for magic beans, climb a beanstalk, etc.

 

Golden lizards. I like the sound of that!