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Moving Forward

December 28, 2012

Coaches will often convey to their teams a variation of this theme:  “If we’re not moving forward, we’re falling behind.”  And with such immediate feedback – the next contest – coaches can measure their team’s progress quite easily. Progress is harder to measure for the organizations that serve and support coaches and athletes.

If we are doing our jobs well, we will have both an “inside game” and an “outside game.”  We will create our own opportunities to improve our services and we will be alert to opportunities to improve ourselves when they are handed to us or forced upon us from outside sources.  Both types of change can be positive.

  • Change from inside has the benefit of institutional knowledge.  This change can be informed, measured and careful to avoid unintended consequences that hurt more than help customers.
  • Change from outside can be less rational but also less restrained by history and culture.  It can be more disruptive in a positive sense, perhaps more innovative in origin and more expansive in impact.

It’s my sense that, as the calendar turns from 2012 to 2013, the MHSAA is at the merging of two lanes of traffic – an inside lane of change combining with an outside lane change – which will modify some services and move them forward at unprecedented speeds during the new year and the next.

  • This has been obvious as we have partnered with ArbiterSports to prepare the ArbiterGame scheduling software for our member schools.  Hard work internally that’s about to show results to schools and their publics.
  • This may become obvious as we expand our schedule of inexpensive camps for inexperienced officials.  This could be an antecedent to additional training requirements for MHSAA tournament officials.  The public expects better, and we can do better.
  • This may also become obvious as we expand offerings and then add requirements for coaching education focused on maximizing good health and minimizing risk.  There is a gathering parade of experts and evidence advocating for much more training for many more coaches; and we must find our way to the head of that column.

Leadership Impressions - #1 (The Double Win)

June 8, 2018

I have tried to treat the staff I’ve hired at the Michigan High School Athletic Association the way I wanted to be treated as a staff member before I came to the MHSAA as executive director. I wanted to be given a job and be allowed to run with it, without interference.

This dislike I have for micromanagement turned out to be a double win. Staff have enjoyed their freedom, and I’ve enjoyed mine. By not spending time overseeing and second-guessing staff, the executive director has had time to work on other matters.

Those other matters have sometimes turned out to be unique and defining features of the MHSAA. For example:

  • The only state high school association to publish an issued-focused magazine, benchmarks.

  • The only state high school association to conduct a face-to-face, multi-level coaches education program anytime, anywhere across the state, the Coaches Advancement Program.

  • The only state high school association to conduct the true sport of girls competitive cheer.

  • The only state high school association to mandate reporting of all suspected concussions in practices or competition for all sports by all member high schools.

  • The only state high school association to pay for concussion care “gap” insurance for all students in grades 6 through 12, at no cost to schools or families.

  • The only state high school association with a Task Force on Multi-Sport Participation.

But at least as often, this time for reflection has helped the association identify areas of weakness that could be turned into strengths. For example:

  • It allowed us to be among the nation’s earliest adopters of concussion protocols, and then to see the need to appoint a task force to address contact/collision exposure during football practice.

  • It allowed us to be among the earliest adopters of regular-season recommendations and postseason requirements for managing high heat and humidity.

  • It allowed us to move from the back of the room to nearly head of the class in terms of state high school association health and safety training requirements for coaches.

It was only because the MHSAA operated with a talented and empowered staff that the executive director could devote time to the NFHS Network during the past five years, serving as the Network board chairman during its first five years of operation. This forward-looking initiative is arguably the most effective platform the National Federation of State High School Associations has ever had for promoting school-based sports and the values of educational athletics.

A hands-off, lead-by-example leadership style unlocks the time leaders need to look down the road and around the corner, to try to separate trendy fad from fundamental trend.

Sports is a slave to defined season and contest starting and stopping points that promote routine. But in today’s world, school sports requires anything but routine thinking. And breaking from routine thinking demands that high school athletic association leaders leave their staff alone and replace as many supervisory hours as possible with opportunities to learn from people in other places working in other disciplines ... and then to disrupt our routines with some of those ideas.