Life Saving

January 22, 2013

Just prior to last month’s holidays, all MHSAA staff completed a refresher course in CPR and use of AEDs.

Next month – Feb. 4-8 – a consortium of governmental and non-governmental groups is planning and promoting “Michigan Schools CPR/AED Drill Week.”

Early intervention by calling 9-1-1 and the use of the most up-to-date CPR procedures and an AED are the critical factors to increase the chance of surviving cardiac arrest.

Plan now to use Feb. 4-8, 2013, as a focal point for extra attention to the simple steps that can help save the lives of our students, colleagues, friends and neighbors.  A helpful website is http://www.aeddrill.com.

Hopefully, this one week will be used to increase expectations that AED drills will occur with regularity – perhaps every semester – at every MHSAA member school.

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.