Panama Points
January 25, 2012
Author David Kord Murray opines in Borrowing Brilliance that almost all good ideas are borrowed, and the farther afield one roams from the topic at hand the more useful the idea may be (and the more brilliant it may appear to be).
So it didn’t surprise me to discover useful ideas for modern day leadership and management in a book written in the 1970s about a period many years before that – David McCullough’s history of the building of the Panama Canal titled The Path Between the Seas.
I learned first that the primary task of this huge project was not what it appears to be. It was not primarily an engineering feat, but medical. Not removing dirt, but disease. Not conquering the largest obstacles, but the smallest insects. It was only after the diseases were understood and controlled that the construction could advance and the project could be completed.
Second, I learned that once the construction was begun, there was a bigger challenge than digging the pathway clear. It was removing the unwanted dirt and debris to other places. It wasn’t the front end of the project alone that mattered, but the back end as well: where to put the hundreds of millions of tons of rock and dirt on or around this narrow isthmus of land.
For every project there is need to assess what the underlying issues are that might get in the way of accomplishing the more apparent tasks before us.
And for every project there is need to fully assess consequences. We don’t want merely to move the dirt around, creating new problems as we do so.
I will be considering these thoughts as I soon see with my own eyes the Panama Canal, constructed over four decades and completed almost 100 years ago. And gratefully, I will be fully immunized for diseases largely conquered during the completion of this engineering marvel.
Seal of Approval
February 12, 2016
“Sanction” is an interesting word. Sometimes it is used in a negative way, as in penalties, like the U.S. trade embargoes recently lifted on Iran and Cuba. Other times, to sanction something is to endorse it or at least approve its existence.
It is in this second, more positive sense that school sports uses the word “sanction” with respect to athletic events. And with respect to interstate meets and contests, the MHSAA adheres to the Sanctioning Bylaws of the national organization to which it belongs, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS).
Without getting into the policies and procedures, here is what the NFHS says about the philosophy of sanctioning interstate athletic events:
Interscholastic programs should serve educational goals. To this end, schools have an obligation to conduct certain threshold inquiries about events in which their students may participate. On occasion, additional inquiries and oversight may be appropriate at the conference, district, state or national levels. In order to perform their “inquiry and oversight” functions fairly and efficiently, decision-makers at various levels have developed sanctioning procedures. The specific purposes served by event-sanctioning procedures include the following:
1) Sanctioning enhances the likelihood that events will adhere to sound and detailed criteria which meet the specific requirements of a school or a group of schools based upon experience and tradition.
2) Sanctioning serves to promote sound regulation of the conditions under which students and teams may compete.
3) Sanctioning is a means of encouraging well-managed competition.
4) Sanctioning adds an element of “due diligence” that encourages compliance with state association rules and regulations.
5) Sanctioning protects the welfare of student-athletes.
6) Sanctioning protects the existing programs sponsored by member schools and thereby promotes the opportunity for larger numbers of student-athletes to gain the benefits of interscholastic competition.
7) Sanctioning helps reduce the abuses of excessive competition.
8) Sanctioning promotes uniformity in obtaining approval for events.
9) Sanctioning helps protect students from exploitation.
Interstate event sanctioning at the NFHS level promotes financial transparency and equivalency of treatment of participating high schools. NFHS sanctioning forms are available on the NFHS website (www.nfhs.org).