What are your greatest challenges? It’s a question we pose in our many surveys of the pupil transportation industry. At some point each year, we ask this question of transportation directors at public and private operations, maintenance managers, special-needs supervisors and, of course, drivers.

As you might expect, the answers change from year to year, depending on outside factors such as the economy, regulatory developments, fuel prices, societal shifts or the unemployment index.

Now it’s my turn
To reciprocate, I thought I would take a few minutes and describe my greatest challenges as a magazine editor, which, as you’ll see, are not much different from yours.

First, we have deadlines. I’ve recently begun calling them “due dates,” because deadline is such an oppressive term. Call them what you want, it’s still up to our staff to get the magazine to the printer in a timely fashion.

The problem is that we have a lot on our plates. In addition to the magazine, we put out two e-mail newsletters and update our Website regularly. We also get requests for information from readers, which we try to fulfill as best we can. Other responsibilities include traveling to industry events and making “reader calls,” which are visits to school bus operations for a real-world look at what you do for a living.

You’ve got a similar challenge — keeping your buses on schedule. Whereas our deadlines are spread relatively far apart, yours occur within minutes of each other. What’s more, you face any number of uncontrollable outside influences, such as traffic snarls and inclement weather, that put your schedule at risk. By comparison, our challenge to meet our due dates seems tame.

Another key challenge is finding time to do more than just put out the magazine. Although I think we do an excellent job in providing the industry with useful and illuminating information, I want to do more. With each issue I’d like to raise the bar.

I’m guessing that your challenge is the same. You have ideas that you’d like to implement that would improve the safety and efficiency of your operations, but you don’t have time to properly develop them. You’re too busy responding to the daily needs of your department.

Investing in the future
The final challenge that I’d like to acknowledge is related to the previous one: breaking away from the daily grind long enough to train your people. As managers, we’re so busy with our own needs that we tend to neglect the needs of the people who support us.

But they are the future of the organization. When we move on, these people will become the new generation of leaders. Will they be prepared to take up the position without missing a beat or will they be forced to learn the system on their own at the expense of the department?

We’re encouraged to coach, counsel and train our staff, but we often feel so overwhelmed by our workloads that we can’t justify the investment of time. The real challenge these days isn’t finding time to handle day-to-day matters, it’s breaking away from the small fires to deal with the larger ones.