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More than Fun and Games

September 24, 2014

Five years ago there were many skeptics when the MHSAA redesigned its website and included twice-weekly blogs by the executive director and active Facebook and Twitter pages as well as YouTube channels, and gave constituents and critics alike an opportunity to post comments. Some skeptics said we were being distracted with frivolous fun and games, and others said all this interaction would be a persistent source of problems.

In fact, for the MHSAA, this constituent engagement has been about much more than fun and games and it’s been a means to solve problems.

Our primary use of social media and other means of constituent engagement has been to drive people to high school events and to the MHSAA website where the distinctive messages of educational athletics would stand out.

Rather than creating problems, allowing the crowd to enter scores on MHSAA.com has led us to post more accurate scores more rapidly than when we depended on school coaches or administrators alone.

More recently we have been reviewing our event emergency plans and our office business continuation plans, which had been developed before social media became a fact of life; and now we are revising those documents to make social media the primary means of communication during such problems.

It is entirely through social media, primarily Facebook and YouTube – that the MHSAA has caused people to be talking about sportsmanship and inciting larger, more positive student and adult spectator sections at high school contests. That’s our award-winning “Battle of the Fans” that moves into its fourth year in 2014-15.

The Problem with Exceptions

November 22, 2011

Picking up where my last blog left off, this posting presents two more of six lessons that experience has taught me during my enriching years with the MHSAA.

Lesson No. 2:  Beware of bad precedent.

An exception today that doesn’t seem to matter much is almost certain to be recalled and used against you tomorrow when it really does matter. People have poor memories for most things, but they have long memories for exceptional things, like making an exception to a rule.

A corollary to this lesson is that “no good deed goes unpunished.”

Lesson No. 2 is closely related to Lesson No. 3:  The path of least resistance usually is not.

Making an exception for a squeaky wheel will likely lead to more noise, not less.

One corollary to this lesson is that there will be more fallout when people believe you have ignored rules than when people believe you have been heartless in applying the rules as stated.

A second corollary to this is that following the rules is the safest harbor during stormy seas.