Our Times
November 11, 2011
It is in fashion to say that schools (and also school sports) are operating in a time of unprecedented austerity. This is not true. Not even close.
While it may be true that recent times in Michigan have seen a deeper and longer recession than most people have lived through before, it is not true that these are the worst times ever for school sports.
Imagine the austerity, and imagine yourself administering school sports during the Great Depression when unemployment was three times today’s rate. Or during World War II when gasoline was rationed and MHSAA tournaments were cancelled. Now those were tough times!
What may make us think at this moment that these current times are the worst times or are unique times is that these are our times, and we don’t yet see light shining at the end of the tunnel through which we’re traveling.
Because it affects us now and isn’t something we’re reading about in history, we tend to believe these times are somehow much worse and that today’s problems are somehow of such a different type that our programs are at greater risk than ever before.
It is possible, of course, that our reaction to these times will be unique and will make these times the worst ever. In other words, it’s not the troubled times per se, but our reaction to them that might set these times apart from all others.
It is possible that we will chop and change school sports so much that we never get the program back on the course of truly school-sponsored, student-centered educational athletics – a brand of sports unique in the world.
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?