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Planning & Doing

January 31, 2012

One of the MHSAA’s counterpart organizations in another state recently asked to see the business plans of other statewide high school associations.  Some of the states supplied their detailed budgets, but most had nothing to offer.

Of course, a budget is a much different thing than a business plan.  A budget is built more on past performance, while a business plan looks more to the potential of future problems and opportunities.  A business plan is much more than numbers.

Since 2007 we’ve been using a “Mission Action Plan” (MAP) at the MHSAA.  It was developed to deal with the opportunities and obstacles of three powerful trends:  (1) growth of non-school youth sports programs; (2) expansion of educational alternatives to traditional neighborhood schools; and (3) proliferating technology.

While not a typical business plan or a classic “strategic plan,” the “MAP” has become increasingly useful to point the way for the MHSAA both in terms of program and finance.  The MAP states a single “Overarching Purpose;” it identifies four “Highest Priority Goals;” and it lists four multi-faceted “Current Strategic Emphases,” many of which have quantifiable performance targets, including financial goals.

Next to each Current Strategic Emphasis are two boxes.  The first is checked if we’ve gotten started, and the second is checked when we’ve completed the task or are operating at the level we had established as our goal.  At this point, every MAP strategy has been launched, but only a portion have earned the second checkmark.

Quite efficiently, the MAP keeps us both strategic and businesslike without the formality of purer forms of strategic or business plans.    

Fracking in School Sports

May 1, 2015

First there were rumors, then there were reports, and now there are beginning to be results from geological surveys warning that the process of fracking in oil and gas exploration and deep ground extraction is increasing the frequency of earthquakes in several parts of the United States.
I want to say, “Duh! How could it not?” Why would it surprise any rational human being that the delicate blue marble we inhabit would not get off kilter when we bore deep into the surface with drills and explosive charges and then pump water at high pressure into the tunnels we create and the crevices we exploit? When I put that picture in my mind, I shudder.
Often I picture the world of school sports like this marble we inhabit. Sometimes I see exploiters drilling deep into our core, dropping explosives, applying pressure, and extracting what they believe are valuable resources while laying waste to everything else, including very much that is very precious to very many other people – in fact, to most athletes, coaches, administrators, officials, parents and spectators.
We should pay attention to the times when we feel our foundation shaking, even just a little. We should make it difficult for the exploiters to extract our elite, especially when they disregard and lay waste to everything else that holds our world – educational athletics – together.