Overengineering
December 4, 2012
“Overengineering” is anathema to most product manufacturers. Generally, manufacturers desire to put no more time and money into a product than is necessary. They decide upon a reasonable lifespan for a product, and then they use materials and parts that, with rare exception, have been proven to last that long. They do not care to produce a product that lasts longer than the consumer desires; they do not want to invest resources where they won’t see a return.
An exception to this general rule is invoked by those manufacturing products which, if they break, will kill or maim people. Airplanes are the classic example: they’re built with multiple redundancies and with materials and parts that have been tested to last much longer than necessary. The potential for catastrophic loss of life demands this. They will use a part that’s tested to last 20 years, and replace it after ten years just to be safe.
I suspect that some observers of the MHSAA’s recent campaign to increase sports safety training for coaches and modify playing rules that may endanger participants are critical that we’re asking too much, that we’re doing more than is necessary. But frankly, that’s exactly what we intend. When it comes to participant safety, overengineering of policies and procedures ought to be our goal.
Persuasion
April 13, 2012
“People are persuaded by relationships more than reasons.”
That’s the one statement I remember from a radio interview I was inattentively listening to during a recent long drive. I don’t remember the topic, the speaker, the interviewer or the radio station; but that single statement soaked further into my soul as the miles passed by.
I began to think of many instances when I gave the benefit of the doubt to a person I knew well. And the times when both sides of a debate had merit but I decided in favor of the source I knew better and trusted more. Relationships.
I thought of my own failures to direct a change or defend the status quo because I depended solely on solid rationale and disregarded the biases and baggage of those I needed to influence. When I didn’t take time to cultivate allies because I was so certain that the idea itself was powerful enough to carry the day. When my confidence that “what was right” would ultimately prevail, but it did not. Relationships.
Twice during the past four months we have seen a preview of how, more frequently in the future, people will attempt to influence decision making in school sports without building genuine relationships. Once as a first strategy, and once as a last resort, a constituent of our state utilized the World Wide Web to generate support for a policy change.
In each case an online petition was initiated that generated, from across the nation and around the world, a large number of emails, many of which were vulgar, profane or ridiculous, triggering all email to the MHSAA through that website to be filtered as spam, never to be seen by the decision-makers. This approach is the antithesis of effective persuasion.
No organization of substance should be swayed by bored souls surfing the web who, by mere chance, stumble across an issue and then ring in, without real knowledge of that issue, and no real stake in its outcome.