A Meaning-Driven Brand
June 5, 2012
One of the apparent conclusions of the MHSAA online “Have Your Say” opinion poll conducted five years ago that continues to guide us today, is that the character of school sports is key to the appeal of school sports. This is true for both sponsoring school personnel and for those participants and spectators regularly involved in school sports. This suggests that to keep our core customers, we must preserve our core characteristics. That whatever changes occur in school styles and structures, we must maintain by our policies and programs the features and values which our core customers have experienced and both want and expect to continue.
It may sometimes feel that we are swimming against the current of public opinion when we enforce rules that define student eligibility or the limits of competition and travel, but the development and implementation of such restrictions might be essential to the expectations of our core constituents for the experience they remember for themselves and want for their children or team.
Just because schools change, it is not necessary that rules of school sports change as well. Sometimes, perhaps. But not always or even often. Leadership must always consider the program without a rule before we do away with the rule.
It is not too strong to state that schools seek MHSAA membership precisely because there are rules. In fact, schools formed the MHSAA to be their vehicle for making and enforcing rules. Just as participation by students is more valuable to them and their schools where standards of eligibility and conduct are higher, so is membership by schools in an organization more valuable where such standards are developed and enforced.
The Culting of Brands is a good book with a bad title in which author Douglas Atkin writes about the success of “a meaning-driven brand.” He says, “The product carries the message and then becomes it.” These kinds of brands, he says, are really beliefs. “They have morals – embody values.” They “stand up for things. They work hard; fight for what is right.”
Ultimately, it is exactly this that is expected of the high school brand of competitive athletics in Michigan.
The Subjunctive
January 3, 2014
As a frequent traveler to foreign lands and also as a college English major and high school English teacher, my ears perked up when a speaker said recently that there are some languages that, unlike English, do not have the subjunctive verb mood or mode. I love the subjunctive!
That’s the mood of what might have been, the speaker said. For example, “Had I studied harder, I would have received a better grade.” And “If I were you, I would have studied much longer.”
The subjunctive can also be the mood of excuses, I thought. For example, “If the official hadn’t made that traveling call, we would have won the game.” But I digress.
The subjunctive verb mood is used for the hypothetical. This makes it most valuable as a mindset before taking any action. It helps one think of unintended consequences.
But the subjunctive mood is also useful for the remedial: “If we had done this or that differently then, perhaps the result would have been better.”
Thinking in the subjunctive mood as we plan before initiatives, and then also as we evaluate after plans have been rolled out, are the one-two punch of effective project management.
What we must avoid, however, is thinking of the subjunctive as the mood of regrets. “If only I had . . .” And then doing nothing to try to change the future.
As we think about the year just past and about the year ahead, let’s use the subjunctive mood for its better purposes – planning and evaluation, not excuses and regrets.