I need to make a confession.

I am a principal of a firm that is absolutely reliant on notetaking. Without people who can take really good notes and render them into prose that is tailored to the precise needs of our clients, we couldn’t do business.

The best of those people are not just capable. They love the work. They thrive on the experience and the uncertainty of working onsite. They enjoy listening to speakers who range from awesome to awful, capturing the gold, and crafting the story our clients need us to tell.

I must confess that I am not one of those people. While I enjoy writing, I find onsite notetaking to be very hard work. Something I can do. Something I have done, and almost certainly will do again. But I find little joy in it.

It’s not fun for me.

So I’m a little bit in awe of people who can take those notes and tell those stories and have fun in the process. One of our more senior writers once told me how happy she was whenever The Conference Publishers showed up in the Call Display of her telephone. Because Lisa enjoyed the notetaking and the writing, but she loved the surprise—and the learning—that almost every assignment involved.

People like Lisa are not easy to find, and that brings me to another group of people I’m in awe of: our project managers. We regularly call upon Biljana, Margot, and Kate to find a writer in Boston, or two in Copenhagen, or three in Las Vegas. Earlier this month, we had an unexpected assignment come in the door. It required seven writers in Regina, Saskatchewan, and they had a week to assemble the team.

I’m not entirely sure how, but our project managers did it.

When I think about the work of our writers and project managers, I’m reminded of something the late Duncan Macpherson, the Toronto Star‘s chief cartoonist for more than 30 years, once said.

An interviewer had asked Macpherson if being an editorial cartoonist was hard work. He looked out the window of his office and indicated a construction worker many, many storeys above the street, building one of the many office towers that loom over downtown Toronto. “Not,” he replied, “as hard as that.”

The fact is that nothing is hard work if it makes you happy. And I’m just pleased that we’ve found writers and project managers who seem to enjoy meeting the challenges we can offer them.