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In Others’ Words

August 22, 2014

I’ve read and heard multiple times – so I’ve come to believe it’s at least partly true – that one of the techniques that marketing departments or agencies use when developing campaigns to promote a product or service is to look at it from the consumer’s, customer’s or client’s perspective.

The point is often brought home that if management would use this technique as much as marketers, then management would be more effective and would label itself, rather than marketers, as the “creative team.” It chafes me to hear a CEO say he or she wants to know what “creative” has to say about a sponsorship initiative before the CEO will offer an opinion.

Thinking about what our customers want doesn’t require that leaders suspend their personal beliefs or reverse experience-based opinions. It merely asks that we look at things from a different and sometimes even opposite point of view. And to be truly revealing, it asks that we try to put into words where other people stand on a particular topic.

It asks us to actually try to describe what our customers see from where they stand and what they say they want. For example, in our work, it would ask administrators to think about and actually describe what coaches want, and vice versa. And it asks both coaches and administrators to think about and put into their own words what student-athletes want, and what their parents want.

This has been an ongoing part of my life, provoked I suppose by my marriage of 42 years to a woman whose political views often point 180 degrees from my own. And this approach has been especially enlightening on school sports’ most troublesome topics, some of which we are tackling at this time, like ...

  • Out-of-season coaching rules
  • Junior high/middle school programming
  • Health and safety mandates
Second Half by MHSAA

In Search of a Quarterback

October 6, 2011

As America works and wanders its way through the messiness of choosing its presidential candidates, I look around for ones that I wish were available, and I find the choices quite limited and disappointing.  Seems I’ve always tended to favor those who were least electable.

One of those “losers” of years gone by was Jack Kemp who, ironic for the times we now live in, was considered a little too conservative for the national ticket.

Actually, Kemp – the former NFL quarterback, U.S. Congressman and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the first President Bush – appears more balanced and bright than any in the field of candidates the Republican Party will offer this time around.

Kemp’s platform circa 1992 was to be “optimistic, inclusive and ready for change.”  That was his personal style and his prescription for America.

I wish we’d have that choice today for quarterbacking our nation.

But regardless, his approach – “optimistic, inclusive and ready for change” – remains a perfect prescription for organizational leaders, including those who are responsible for schools and school sports.