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?
The Boomerang Effect
March 6, 2013
The image of football on all levels, and the future of football at the youth level, are both worse off today as a result of the NFL’s recent years’ public relations and political campaigns.
The constant barrage of negative publicity about youth football as the NFL advanced its agenda to pass concussion legislation in all 50 states has, to levels not seen before, kicked off the concerns of moms and dads and the media nationwide. In state after state, kids with concussions have been paraded before state legislators, in the company of NFL staff. The NFL has administered a self-inflicted wound, shot itself in the foot, and made FOOTBALL the face of America’s youth sports concussion problem. How the NFL brain trust ever thought this would promote the game of football in America is a wonder.
School-based football today has no greater obstacle to promoting a safe game than the NFL. No brand of football captures the game’s brutal aspects for video more than the NFL. No brand of football celebrates it more. No brand of football CAPITALIZES on it more – so much so that the NFL can donate several million dollars to youth football to buff its “caring” conscience, when in fact it’s a miniscule portion of its multi-billion-dollar business.
Moreover, one of the NFL’s favorite groups for its self-promoted “philanthropy” is USA Football which promotes itself as the national governing body for amateur football in America. One of USA Football’s initiatives is an international championship for high school players, which of course means more hitting out of season for these players. The very activity the experts are telling us to reduce – out-of-season contact – is being promoted by this NFL underwritten organization! And WE get criticized as being against the promotion of football in America when we don’t go along with this backward thinking?