Panama Points
January 25, 2012
Author David Kord Murray opines in Borrowing Brilliance that almost all good ideas are borrowed, and the farther afield one roams from the topic at hand the more useful the idea may be (and the more brilliant it may appear to be).
So it didn’t surprise me to discover useful ideas for modern day leadership and management in a book written in the 1970s about a period many years before that – David McCullough’s history of the building of the Panama Canal titled The Path Between the Seas.
I learned first that the primary task of this huge project was not what it appears to be. It was not primarily an engineering feat, but medical. Not removing dirt, but disease. Not conquering the largest obstacles, but the smallest insects. It was only after the diseases were understood and controlled that the construction could advance and the project could be completed.
Second, I learned that once the construction was begun, there was a bigger challenge than digging the pathway clear. It was removing the unwanted dirt and debris to other places. It wasn’t the front end of the project alone that mattered, but the back end as well: where to put the hundreds of millions of tons of rock and dirt on or around this narrow isthmus of land.
For every project there is need to assess what the underlying issues are that might get in the way of accomplishing the more apparent tasks before us.
And for every project there is need to fully assess consequences. We don’t want merely to move the dirt around, creating new problems as we do so.
I will be considering these thoughts as I soon see with my own eyes the Panama Canal, constructed over four decades and completed almost 100 years ago. And gratefully, I will be fully immunized for diseases largely conquered during the completion of this engineering marvel.
What We’ve Learned
July 12, 2017
Here’s some of what we’ve learned from the first two years of having all Michigan High School Athletic Association member high schools report suspected concussions and make follow-up reports for each.
First and foremost, concussions are of concern beyond football and boys. While football – the highest participation sport – has had the most concussions, the sports that follow are girls basketball (second) and girls soccer (third).
Which leads to the second lesson: Girls report two to three times as many concussions as boys in basketball and soccer, as well as in softball compared to baseball.
Which leads to the third lesson: Whether girls actually experience more concussions than boys or are more forthcoming than boys in reporting suspected concussions, coaches need to coach and communicate with females differently than males; and coach educators must prepare coaches to interact differently with boys and girls.
We’ve also learned that more than 80 percent of concussions caused the athlete to be withheld from activity for six days or longer; and again, there was a tendency to withhold girls longer than boys. In any event, the data suggests that people are taking concussions seriously and not rushing students back into practices or contests.
The data also reveals that more than two-thirds of reported concussions arise from competition, and less than one-third occur during the many longer hours of practice. This is a reversal of the data we were provided a decade ago based on smaller samplings from other states; and this suggests that coaches are finding ways to teach skills and conduct drills without requiring as much player-to-player contact as in the past.
That’s good news. But we’ve also learned from the first two years of data that there is still more to research, more to learn and more to do to make our good games even better.