Becoming Busy or Busy Becoming?
October 30, 2015
While I have served the MHSAA as an employee and several other organizations as a volunteer board member, I have gradually and probably too slowly learned to be more on the lookout for ways to help move these organizations from transactional to transformational business … from mundane and routine tasks that tread water to sea-change strategies that might cause an organization to alter its course.
I have tried to do this in different ways at different times with different organizations; but I was recently handed an idea that I think will work with almost every organization at almost any time. A speaker said, “Are we busy doing, or are we busy becoming?
That question captures the essential difference between transaction and transformation. If every board meeting and staff meeting and committee meeting would start with that question, and/or be used at the end of the meeting as the evaluation tool, the work would broaden in scope and deepen in impact. Little issues would give way to larger topics, and fascination with fads would give way to focus on future trends in our work or in society as a whole that could affect the enterprise in fundamental ways.
Are we busy doing things that will help us become not just a little but very much better at what we do? Are we striving to break down or through barriers that hold us back? Are we searching for fundamental changes not just in how we do things but how we see things? Are we enlarging our vision? Are we searching not just for new ways to do old things, but also to discover altogether new things to do that will cause us to become what our greatest aspirations desire?
Football's Status
June 16, 2017
Football has enjoyed a status within our schools that is unmatched by any other sport.
It attracts more participants than any other interscholastic sport.
Unlike many other sports (think especially of ice hockey, lacrosse and soccer), football began in the high school setting and was not imported from community programs.
And until the past decade, football has not had to cope with out-of-season programs run by non-school groups and commercial entities that are so troublesome – think especially of basketball, ice hockey, soccer and volleyball, but really all sports except football, until recent years.
The growth of 7-on-7 passing leagues and tournaments is the most obvious concern as commercial interests move in to profit from a mostly unregulated summer environment, as began to occur in basketball 30 years ago and has spread to many other sports since.
The Olympic movement has fueled some of this as national governing bodies have engineered programs for younger athletes in efforts to increase medal counts on which the U.S. Olympic Committee bases funding.
The quixotic pursuit of college scholarships is another powerful stimulant; and while the NCAA could have banned its coaches from recruiting away from school venues, it has not done so; and non-school entities have begun to tailor their events toward convenient although costly recruiting venues.
We can expect these events to spread like an invasive species through football unless, learning from the past, the NCAA makes these events off-limits to its coaches, and/or organizations like ours across the country will not only regulate but also conduct programs during the summer.