People Business
April 24, 2012
Last month, Fortune magazine ranked the top 12 business innovators of our time – “founders who turned concepts into companies and changed the face of business.” It was an unsurprising list dominated by the visionary leaders of what are now well-known enterprises. What I found most interesting was a theme.
Microsoft’s Bill Gates, No. 2 on the list (behind Apple’s Steve Jobs), said his best business decisions came down to picking good people and relying on them.
No. 4 Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, credited “a bunch of smart people” that continually take his ideas and improve them.
No. 9 Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines has created “a culture that respected the people he carefully hired.” He said, “front line personnel can either make you or break you. . . Start with employees and the rest follows from that.”
No. 10 Narayana Murthy of the Indian company Infosys said an emerging organization “must coalesce around a team of people with an enduring value system.”
Time and again, the secret sauce is the people. Not policy or procedures or products. People.
Future Thinking
August 11, 2017
The prolific author Thomas Friedman has written more than once that those who don’t invest in the future tend not to do well there.
What might it mean to invest in the future of interscholastic athletics? What are the things we should be doing now that may not show immediate results, but are essential for securing a future for school-sponsored sports?
Two things, I believe, most of all ...
One is the emphasis on serving and supporting junior high/middle school programs. Getting to students and their parents at this stage and even earlier with the meaning of educational athletics. With a definition of success and demonstrations of sportsmanship that differ from other programs. With encouragement to sample different sports and to eschew year-round practice and competition in a single sport. Feeding the roots of high school sports with the nutrients of educational athletics.
The second is the education of coaches, the delivery system of most of these important messages about school sports. What the MHSAA does season after season with rules/risk management meetings and week after week with the Coaches Advancement Program, and what local school administrators do day after day to manage, mentor and motivate coaches. These efforts may not show quick returns, but they are essential investments in the future of school sports.
We cannot expect to do well in the future if we do not pay attention to our foundation – junior high/middle school programs – and to our infrastructure – coaches.