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Risk Taking

February 14, 2012

The June 22, 2009 cover story of Business Week which I just reread was titled “The Risk Takers.”  It featured businesses which during difficult times, instead of playing it safe, placed bets on some gutsy new strategies.

To make a point, the author used an illustration that we can relate to here in Michigan.  I paraphrase:

Imagine a driver on a snowy night.  If the car starts to slip, the driver’s natural instinct is to slam on the brakes and jerk the steering wheel in the opposite direction.  But the laws of physics advise the opposite:  laying off the brakes and steering into the turn.

The author reports that from 1985 to 2000, the average merger in an economic downturn created an 8.5 percent rise in shareholder value after two years; while the average deal in good times resulted in a 6.2 percent drop in the buyer’s share value.  In other words, mergers – one of the biggest, boldest moves in business – do better in bad times than good.  Much better, in fact.

It wasn’t recklessness this article was celebrating; it was risk taking – daring to be aggressive, rather than just defensive, amid a weak economy. Steering into the turn, so to speak.

Just like the winter driving analogy in the article, we who are involved in school sports in Michigan can relate to the big idea of the article because we too made some of our biggest moves at our bleakest times. The MHSAA retrenched in some ways, but the greater theme as we climbed out of our bad times of 2008 was that we made unprecedented investments in new technology.

Today MHSAA.com is the website of highest traffic and MHSAA.tv is the website with the most productions of any comparable organization in the U.S.  And all of these investments in technology during those bad times have allowed us to undertake the ArbiterGame project now that will provide all member high schools the electronic tools necessary to make their tough tasks of school administration more streamlined than ever before.

Change of Pace

January 30, 2015

Michael Schwimer is little known to us in Michigan. He was a 6-8, 240-pound relief pitcher out of the University of Virginia who was drafted in the 10th round by the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008.

In his minor league career, Schwimer earned 20 wins against 10 losses with a respectable 2.51 ERA. He struck out an eye-popping 12 batters per nine innings.

When Schwimer made his Major League Baseball debut for the Phillies in August of 2011, he served up a game-tying home run to the first batter he faced. He was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in February of 2013, and was released by the Blue Jays the following August. You might say Schwimer majored in the minors. That’s where he peaked as a professional baseball player.

As a player, Schwimer made few waves. He wasn’t a “game changer.” And yet, he may still be known as one who helped to change the game itself.

Schwimer is widely reported to be the first MLB player to use a glove that was made of synthetics, not leather (which weighs twice as much), and was made using a plaster cast of his hand. It was a custom-made, form-fitting glove.

The result looks almost like a toy glove, fit for T-ball; but MLB gave it a “thumbs up” in December of 2011. MLB players have been warming to the glove, although very slowly.

To which Schwimer responds: “It takes forever for any change to occur. But when change happens, it happens really fast.”

That almost sounds like something Yogi Berra would have said – like, “it takes forever for change to occur, and then it doesn’t.” But experience very often teaches us the truth of this sentiment.

As the MHSAA reprocesses two of its toughest topics ever – out-of-season coaching rules and 6th-graders’ roles in school sports and the MHSAA – it seems like there is no progress toward change. And no change is the possible outcome of both long journeys.

But it’s also possible that, for one or both topics, the time will come when wisdom and will combine to create constructive change, which then seems to be occurring almost overnight.

My hope is that we find that formula before a rash of problems causes a tipping point that results in a rush toward solutions that are poorly conceived and/or politically imposed by outside entities.