Family Practice
September 21, 2011
During my first winter on the job with the MHSAA I took my 4th-grade son to his first basketball practice, and I watched uncomfortably when his coach directed him to set a pick. My son didn’t have a clue what that meant, and was embarrassed; and I felt like a complete and utter failure as a sports dad.
During the drive home, my son asked me what the coach meant when he said “set a pick and then roll to the basket.”
So when we arrived home, I recruited his mom to guard my son as he dribbled the basketball in the living room, pretending the basket was over the fireplace hearth. I came up behind her and blocked her path as my son dribbled by, opening his path to the “basket.”
We repeated the drill, but this time his mom was wiser and scooted by me to guard my son; and when she did so, I rolled toward the “basket” and called for the ball. My son offered a perfect pass as I moved unguarded toward the goal.
We repeated the plays with me dribbling and my son setting the pick on his mom, and then rolling toward the goal.
Pick and roll, family style.
And my son couldn’t wait for the next practice.
Leadership Impressions - #3 (Embracing Interruptions)
June 15, 2018
I was once told that “the job is the interruptions” – to look at an interruption not as something that detracts from my work but rather is the work. But there are two types of interruptions that have gotten my special attention over the years.
One type happens often, perhaps twice a week when averaged over the course of a year. It happens when the assistant directors of the Michigan High School Athletic Association are asked a novel Handbook question, one of first impression in their experience, and there is a difference of opinion among their colleagues as to the correct answer.
I expect to be involved in answering such questions; and sometimes I determine that the question needs MHSAA Executive Committee attention – for ultimately under the MHSAA Constitution, it is the Executive Committee’s responsibility to interpret what is not clear in Handbook Regulations and Interpretations.
The other type of interruption happens not twice a week but about twice a year, when a legal challenge confronts the MHSAA. It has been our practice to keep other staff focused on the daily business of the MHSAA, helping to make tournaments and other programs operate without distraction; while the executive director (as well as the associate director in more recent years) deals with litigation, which is usually a three- to six-month sprint but can also be a three- to six-year marathon.
I expect to insulate other staff from these diversions that can suck time and energy out of a forward-looking staff.
We anticipate that every day will bring us questions that were not on that day’s to-do list. We try to treat those interruptions as an important part of our work.