Keep Calm and Manage Your Community
Like any management role, when you manage an online community, you’ll be faced with challenges on a regular basis. You’ll have to put out a lot of fires.
Some will be like blowing out a candle, but in other cases, a part of your house may be on fire. You then can choose one of two paths. Either you try to put out the fire or you let the house burn down.
Whatever the challenge is, as the administrator or manager, it is your responsibility to remain calm, think about the issue objectively and make the best decision that you can.
Back when Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter was the president of Def Jam, a song by Young Jeezy, one of his hottest artists, leaked to radio. An emergency meeting was called, but Mr. Carter didn’t see it as an emergency. The song, he said, was a club record and radio wouldn’t be so inclined to play it.
“Manage your heat,” he told Jeezy’s A&R man. “Get your Joe Torre on.” Which meant, as Touré explained in the Rolling Stone piece that told this story, to “become a brilliant manager and navigate the situation.”
Or, as I might put it:
