Lift
November 11, 2011
Not too long ago there was a television commercial that depicted a huge jumbo jet taking off. Then the pilot spoke about what it takes to lift such a large load off the ground.
The pilot said that to get such a huge weight off the ground you don’t go with the wind. You go against it. He said, “What pushes against us, lifts us up.”
There is no question that this is the recent story for the MHSAA which, momentarily in 2008, was knocked off balance by an adverse judgment by a federal court. In many respects, the MHSAA is stronger – financially and in other ways – because of 2008. The bad times made us better.
I’m hoping we will be able to say the same about local school sports generally a few years from now. That these bad times made us better. That today’s headwinds gave us the lift we needed to reach new and improved heights in school-based sports.
The Social Setting
March 18, 2014
Between these headlines was one of more significance: Facebook announced that it would be paying $19 billion to purchase WhatsApp. Which means social media is here to stay. And everybody, including big time basketball coaches, needs to deal with it in better ways than merely blasting it and/or barring it.
What it means for an organization like mine is that everything we do needs to be considered in all the usual goals, objectives and strategies progressions, and that at least one progression must have social media as an outcome and almost all progressions must have social media as a tactic.
Just over a decade ago we realized that almost every task we have has an information technology component. We discovered we needed our IT staff in the room when new projects or protocols were being considered, when new policies were being developed, and when all sorts of problems were being addressed. Fail to involve IT personnel soon enough or at all, we learned, and failure of the enterprise was assured.
We are at the same point today with social media. If we neglect the social media component – fail to consider how to use it to the advantage of the project or fail to consider how adverse social media could doom the project – we operate with at least one hand tied behind our back.
Just as the IT staff have needed to be consulted, and listened to, in order for the enterprise to reach its potential, so must our social media staff have a seat at the table and a voice in the discussion of anything of consequence we might think we should do.
This is as true for nonprofit organizations as it is for profit, for small organizations and large, both private and public.