Designed and Delivered
March 8, 2016
The benefits of school sports do not occur by accident. They occur by design and by delivery.
It is the design of policies and procedures to keep the program student-focused, school-centered, sensible in scope, safe, sane and sportsmanlike. All core values of educational athletics.
The value is also enhanced by the delivery system – the quality of coaching and expertise of administration.
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Just as the teacher is the key to learning in the academic classroom, the coach is the key to learning on the athletic team. This is why the MHSAA has designed and delivers a face-to-face, multi-level coaching education program anytime, anywhere in Michigan.
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The other key of the delivery system is the local school athletic administrator with a skill set that meets the complex demands of a program that operates in an arena of high emotion and risk of injury. This is why Michigan often leads the nation in the number of high school athletic directors who have completed the highest level of training and certification of the National Interscholastic Athletics Administrators Association, and why the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association and the MHSAA devote so much time and attention to initial and ongoing athletic director training.
FBI Tips
July 14, 2014
In a June 9, 2014 National Public Radio story about the first nine months of James B. Comey’s 10-year term as FBI director, two leadership tips emerged that may apply to all types of organizations.
The first is that since the 9/11 tragedy, the FBI has had to change from an agency created to catch bank robbers to an agency that prevents crime before it occurs.
While all comparisons pale next to 9/11, many organizations have had some kind of crisis that demonstrates dramatically that the organization must change fundamentally in order to serve its overarching purpose in a changing world.
It requires an entirely different mindset, perhaps, an entirely reordered set of priorities.
The second point raised in the interview, and very likely the key to accomplishing the first, is that the FBI is now focused on the biggest steps, not just the easiest ones. This is what Director Comey sees is necessary for the FBI to become the agency our nation needs in today’s world.
The required response to a defining-moment crisis cannot be cosmetic change, but must be almost genetic change. Hard change – a focus on deep, systemic issues, not superficial matters.
It requires an entirely different level of commitment than existed before.