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Permission to Disagree

February 17, 2015

An organization leader who is doing a good job works hard to provide the organization’s board of directors all the history and detail necessary to make good decisions. Questions and concerns are anticipated, and addressed in advance.
As a result of this good leadership, meetings usually run with efficiency, decisions are made without long discussions, and debate is infrequent and never contentious. Votes usually reflect unanimous agreement.
While these are traits of good organizational leadership, a tradition of great organizational dynamics is disagreement.
If the board is always in total agreement, then management is not bringing the board tough enough topics. The subjects are not serious enough. They are operational more than strategic; they are transactional, not transformational.
Among the current topics of school sports in Michigan are two upon which there is certain to be disagreement: (1) the role of 6th-graders in school sports and the MHSAA; and (2) out-of-season coaching rules. We see the lack of consensus at the local level and the league level and between different coaches associations. And we expect the Representative Council will lack unanimity if these topics ever arrive for the Council’s action.
These are large topics, worthy of our time because of the disagreement, not in spite of it.

Our Drop in the Ocean

December 18, 2015

It has been difficult, recently, for us to get too worked up over the complaints submitted to this office about officials’ calls, coaches’ decisions, students’ ineligibilities and tournament times and venues. All of this seems petty in light of the terrorism in Paris and other places, and the worldwide refugee crisis as innocent people flee from atrocities in their homelands.

Try to imagine the pain in Paris and other places of recent mass execution. Try to imagine the horror that refugees have faced in their native countries and their ongoing agony in the camps that contain them for years while more “civilized” nations struggle politically and economically with decisions that define their humanity.

But now, as often before, we remind ourselves that the job we are paid to do requires our focused attention and best efforts as we try to make our small niche in the world of sports – our drop of water in the ocean of the world’s concerns – a little bit better each day.

And also now, as often before, we try to interpret how the worldwide human condition affects us and might be affected by us. Affects us, for example, with the need to improve tournament venue security. Is affected by us, for example, by delivering programs that help create in young athletes those qualities that will make them good citizens of their future world – adults who are respectful, tolerant and compassionate.

When I traveled in Northern Africa recently, I encountered immense admiration for the United States – what our hosts always referred to as “America.” People elsewhere look past the shallow or spiteful political rhetoric of our so-called leaders and candidates for leadership to see a disciplined freedom exercised by the citizens of our country that is still, in spite of our shortcomings, the world’s best hope for peace and prosperity.

This country is unique in the world. And school-sponsored sports exist in this country like no other place on earth. There just might be a connection. Which is why – even when the world’s problems seem too large for us to impact – by doing our best every day to deliver these programs, we actually may be performing a vital role.