Teaming Up
February 21, 2012
Try as I might, and no matter how much I practiced, I never became comfortable going to my left as a high school basketball player. I feel the same way about some of this job I have today.
If I’m asked a question about student eligibility, my response is usually quick and confident. The topic is in my wheelhouse, my comfort zone, my right hand.
But when I need to make a decision about information technology, a subject that didn’t exist when I started in this work, I need much more time and I’m more tentative with my answers. And it feels like I’m dribbling with my left hand.
Unfortunately, as time goes by, I’m faced with more questions that are in my area of weakness than my area of strength. It’s just the way the world works today, with everything tied into or revolving around technology.
Fortunately, we’ve assembled a team at the MHSAA office that includes staff for whom technology is not a thing. It just is. Like the air they breathe. They are as instinctive with their advice about technology as I am about the transfer rule.
Gratefully, there’s room for both of us in a modern enterprise serving traditional values.
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.