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One More Call

November 23, 2011

This blog continues with lessons learned on my highly motivating but sometimes hot seat at the MHSAA.  It’s Lesson No. 4:  Make one more call.

Not 100 percent of the time, but well over 50 percent of the time, if I had made one more call before making or communicating a tough decision, either the decision would have been different or, more often, the decision would have been received better.

Obviously there are limits to this. There always could be one more call.  But it has become a “Roberts Rule of Order” anyway to make one more call. For I can trace an inordinate percentage of wrong decisions, or bad reactions to correct decisions, to not making one more call.

More often than not on difficult decisions, I work in tandem with other MHSAA staff and especially Associate Director Tom Rashid who now routinely makes that one more call. It has improved both our decisions and communications.

Push Pause

May 2, 2017

For the past 15 months, the Michigan High School Athletic Association has focused more of its precious resources of time and money on these four priorities:

  • Define and Defend Educational Athletics

  • Promote Participant Health and Safety

  • Serve and Support Junior High/Middle School Programs

  • Recruit and Retain Contest Officials

These topics were brought into focus by making time for the MHSAA staff and Representative Council to pause from the frenetic pace of everyday duties to talk about constituents’ current needs and to think about the next big things that are just down the road and perhaps around a metaphorical corner.

It is time to ignore the tyranny of the urgent, push “pause,” and engage the MHSAA staff and Representative Council once again in a time of research into and reflection about the current and near-future needs and wants of the constituents they serve. This discussion could lead anywhere, but these topics will get things started:

  • What’s next for kids that could/should involve us – e.g., Robotics? E-Games? Water Polo? Girls Field Hockey? Boys Volleyball? Girls Flag Football? Road Racing? Snowboarding? Weightlifting?

  • What’s our role with respect to special programming for students with cognitive or physical disabilities?

  • If given a windfall, how would we best spend $50,000? $250,000? $500,000?