Thursday, December 13, 2007

What We Learn from Sports and Business

Together Everyone Achieves More

"Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success." -- Henry Ford

Ford's assembly line was built on a principle of teamwork. Everyone had to do their job well. Everyone had to assume that the others on the line would do their jobs well. Everyone needed to realize that their own work was part of a greater whole. We can glean a lot from those words.

“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime.” -- Babe Ruth


At one time, George Herman ("Babe") Ruth held several of the great "individual" records in baseball. He was the home run king, but he knew that his home runs were only a part of winning games. Often, he'd have a great day, but the game would be lost. Alternatively, there would be days when he struck out several times, and yet the game was won. The players comprise the team, but the team wins games and championships.

"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. " -- "Terrence Mann," from Field of Dreams

If you have seen the film, or even if you haven't, at points baseball is used in it as a metaphor for relationships within a society. Here, we read that when our world is spinning on -- seeming to overwhelm us -- we individuals need something constant in our lives. The relationships that we build with one another (even if they are only the perceived allegiances that come with sports franchises) -- these things "mark the time." Our relationships with one another are the one constant. When we feel as though we are losing track of our mission, our objectives, and our goals, are relationships with the other members of the community are still there.

Whether we're looking at football, baseball, hockey, or volleyball, the team is more than a collection of individuals. A good team ethic reinforces the best qualities of each of its individuals and downplays their worst attributes. Sometimes we can get caught up in our own worlds to the point where the others' worlds seem unimportant. However, it is at those times when we need one another the most. It is at those points in our lives when a great team is the most successful.

Great businesses operate the same way: not with a top-down, heavy-handed authority structure but with what we college types call "shared governance." Everyone buys into the goals. Everyone experiences the college mission first hand. Faculty, staff, and administrators recognize the value in one another and realize their own importance in achieving the goals.

Yes, we can learn a lot from sports and business...about teamwork strategies that WORK.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

A Matter of Accreditation

In 2003, the President's Council -- in cooperation with the faculty and staff, and with input from the students -- developed a new Strategic Plan. This plan was created as a direct response to specific recommendations from the accreditation team. Instead of focusing solely on academics, as the prior Academic Master Plan had done, the Strategic Plan contains the following elements:
  1. Educational Programs
  2. Resources
  3. Culture
  4. Economic and Community Development.
The third goal was described as follows: "This goal refers to collegiality and communication within all facets of the college; student services, evaluation of services; and program and institutional improvement."

Four years later, it is this goal that most needs to be addressed. Productive discussions about the college's direction and shared focus are going to be held, and in order to do so, we must agree together on some ground rules for these discussions. Dave Gottshall proposed the following rules for making the discussion of different ideas more productive:
  1. Give equal time.
  2. Do not gripe.
  3. Do not compare systems.
  4. Do not idly show and tell.
  5. Do not hold back.
  6. Mutually enforce the other five.
Yet these "rules" come from principles. Indeed, it is necessary to share principles in order to work together.
  1. People will be positive and productive.
  2. People learn best from one another, from sharing their expertise. They have vast, sometimes untapped, knowledge about their profession.
  3. Diversity generates creative thinking.
  4. The collective wisdom and experience of the group surpass any individual or single approach.
  5. Less is more. Simplification is key to learning.
These principles are reasonably similar to the principles guiding any great relationship between people. For example, "Dr. Phil" writes...
"Choose to forgive. Holding onto a grudge will only eat you up inside and cause huge family rifts."
"Sometimes relationships need a hero. That means someone has to step up and be the bigger person to close the gap. Someone has to make the first move, the first compromise, to heal the relationship."
"No matter how flat you make a pancake, it still has two sides. Step into the other person's shoes and try to see their side of the story."

Aren't these principles for addressing family conflict similar to the principles for addressing community conflict? When all the shouting is done, and when all the angst has been emoted, we must all work together. It is not productive for us to shove one another aside. It is not productive to tell one another that we do not need them. I need your help, and you need mine. We are part of a collective, and so we need one another.

If we decide, as Dr. Phil says, to be the hero and to forgive...
if we decide, as Dave
Gottshall says, to be positive and embrace our diversity...
then we will easily agree to rules for productive discussion.
We will share, and we will not gripe.
We will speak honestly and freely to one another without anger or disdain.
We will focus on finding solutions rather than pointing out other people's faults.
We will realize that we are all equal partners in this community.
We will change ourselves rather than trying to change others.
Before you know it, we will have the culture of collegiality about which we dreamed four years ago.