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Questions

September 9, 2014

Sometimes leadership looks at questions as a challenge to its authority, or as a way to obstruct progress. Both can be true.

But a better way to view a good question is as a valuable gift. It can provide an opportunity to learn, to consider details that hadn’t been addressed or alternatives that hadn’t been raised.

And a better way to look at a leader than the one with all the answers is to view the leader as a collector of questions.

The quality of those questions can have a direct relationship on the quality of ideas and initiatives that form, and a direct effect on programs and services that follow.

During August and September, MHSAA Associate Director Tom Rashid has been meeting with athletic administrators at their league meetings. Among several objectives has been to ask these front line administrators to think about some new approaches to some old topics – like out-of-season coaching limitations and policies and programs for junior high/middle school students. He has been asking questions, and then he’s been listening to questions, both of which are preparing us for more in-depth discussions on these topics throughout the remainder of the 2014-15 school year.

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.