Championship Week

I'm currently writing a paper proposal that hinges on the idea that performing groups (sports teams, army platoons, firefighters) have a different approach to time cycles than other types of groups.

On a slightly related note, this reminds me of a certain time of the year when I was an undergraduate at UC Davis. The beginning of June was always Championship Week--the most action-oriented part of the year for me (even if it is longer than a week-Championship Fortnight doesn't work for me). During that time, we had 1) class finals, I was usually 2) premiering the movie project I had been working on most of the year, the little league teams we coached had their 3) playoff games, and we had our own for 4) intramural softball.

I remember a year in which I premiered The Sphinxters on June 2 (after staying up for 60 hours like a silly undergrad) on the same day as playoffs for men's softball and inner-tube water polo, had a coed IM softball semifinal game on June 3, little league playoff games on June 4 and 6, and an early final on June 7. That's not to say I was busy; rather, the point is that it was time to go big or go home, for lack of a better cliche. Everyone has times like this, where the peaks run together.

In 2008, my Championship Week is happening right now. Our graduate coed softball championship is tomorrow. Our kickball playoff game (and subsequent championship game) is on Friday. Papers are due next week, right before finals and right after the Cuatro de Mayo kickball tournament. And this all comes on the heels of when we celebrate Easter Sunday, a day on which Christ was a champion over death (okay, I didn't have to do much for that one to happen, but it's still very important).

So now's the time to go big or go home! Sack up! This is the time when heroes shine! Put your money where your mouth is and your nose to the grindstone!

Put your money on the grindstone?

They're Next To The Skirts

I'm learning new words in class. The next time I go to the store I'm going to ask: "Excuse me sir, can you point me towards your bifurcated lower body clothing?"

If It Ain't Broke, Break it.

Yesterday in Group Comm class we were talking about if success is measurable, and it got me to thinking about how organizations react to success and failure, namely the following question: If an organization is successful in one round of action, should the conversation afterwards be about change? In other words: If it ain't broke, should we fix it anyway?

The answer from most contemporary Org Comm and Business researchers would be a resounding "YES." There's the idea that if you are being reactive as opposed to proactive, you are already behind the curve. A sports example: Why is Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland Athletics, considered such a good executive? Part of the support for his style is that he doesn't wait for his team to do poorly before he executes drastic change--or what Andy Tollison tells me is called disruptive change.

In fact most of our class--including our professor--agreed that proactive/disruptive change is necessary for successful organizations. I'm not going to disagree with that; it's pretty clear that staying ahead of the curve is an important component of continued success.

In class I drew the following diagram:


In retrospect, the question I have is more spectral than diagrammatic (that's a big word). Here's what I should have drawn:


The fact is that a feedback process cannot possibly result in absolute change or absolute stagnancy; 100% change is rare in organizations (and I would say impossible), and there has to be a strong, concerted effort to make no changes whatsoever.

Looking at a feedback process AFTER failure and BEFORE success, there is probably a high degree of change occurring, falling somewhere on the right side of the spectrum. The only situations in which I could see little change in those feedback processes is if luck is the major factor in success; for example, if we were guessing heads or tails on a coin flip, it doesn't really matter if you change strategy/process/leaders/whatever in between rounds of action.

What about after success? In the 1950's, you would probably hear "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." That's a bit ignorant by contemporary standards. Now you'll hear that proactive change is ALWAYS necessary, which I don't think is right either. How can organizations determine what degree of change will lead to continued success? Time to do some research...


(On a side note, happy birthday to Jill Kelly! She's 25 and loves statistical design, so I got her Randomized Blocks of friendship. See you at kickball, Jill.)

Don't Wash Your Hair on July 25

It looks like we'll be premiering my first feature-length documentary, "Out of Egypt", on Friday, July 25 in San Jose. Needless to say, there has been a lot of hard work put into this project and I hope that everyone can come enjoy the fruits of our labor (and the beans of labor; it's a Friday, so we're fasting).

Why Not...

I'm so so bad at sports predictions that I really shouldn't be entering March Madness pools and fantasy football leagues and all that stuff...so without further ado, here are my predictions for the 2008 MLB Season!

AL East - Boston
AL Central - Detroit
AL West - LA Angels
AL Wildcard - Cleveland

NL East - Atlanta
NL Central - Chicago Cubs
NL West - Arizona
NL Wildcard - NY Mets

AL Playoffs - LA over Cleveland, Detroit over Boston, LA over Detroit
NL Playoffs - Atlanta over Chicago, Arizona over NY Mets, Atlanta over Arizona
World Series - LA over Atlanta in 7

For Coach Price

My friend Brian wrote me an e-mail this morning to say that our JV football coach, Gary Price, had passed on from this world. Coach Price was very active with students at Monta Vista in other capacities as well; he worked in food service at the school, coached the women's basketball team, even coached baseball before I was in high school. My words will never convey quite as much as what Coach Price taught us personally, but I want to relate a few stories about him that can say a little about the kind of man he was:

1) We were not a very good football team our freshman year. We started off the season with a bunch of losses, and we were losing at halftime to another team (I don't remember which one). Coach Price finished up his halftime speech, and concluded with this: "Alright. We're down 14 to 0. We're gonna come back and win this game, and we're gonna start doing things right!"

That in itself wasn't special; every coach motivates his team in a similar fashion. The difference with Coach Price was that he was relentless in his optimism. Every Thursday, he would tell us: "Alright. We're oh and [however many games we lost]. We're gonna win tomorrow, and we're gonna start doing things right!" Even up until the last game at halftime, when we were 0-9, Coach Price kept a rosy outlook on the season and on life. I always appreciate that worldview, that we can't change what we have done in the past, but what's important is what we do from this point on in our lives.

2) A personal story: I quit the football team my sophomore year the weekend before school started. I hated practice and I didn't see myself playing very much anyway. Coach Price found me in the locker room that Monday and asked me why I quit. He didn't make any promises about playing time (I was a backup on offense and defense), but he said he needed me on the team.

Why would he go out of his way to keep a player who wasn't going to help him that much during the season? I'm not going to make the argument that he did it so a husky 14-year old would understand the idea of commitment, but he taught me something regardless.

3) A fun story: In that freshman football season, when we couldn't win a game, Coach Price gathered us all together one Thursday at the end of practice. We all took a knee on the JV football field, and he started talking to us (and I'm paraphrasing from memory):

"You guys are on the football team. You guys are supposed to be the stars...you're supposed to win. But who's gonna want an oh and nine team? Who wants to date an oh and nine quarterback?

(he looks around, and in the distance he takes note of a few students walking towards the pool, and he cracks a smile)

"See those guys over there? Those water polo boys in their speedos? Those guys are gonna get the girls. Those water polo boys are gonna steal our women!...Shoot! You guys gonna let that happen?"

By this point, the entire team is cracking up, Coach Ray is doubled over, and Coach Price is restraining his smile, trying to keep things light on the eve of our last game. That's my personal lasting image of Gary Price, keeping us in good spirits when we needed it the most.



Thanks Coach Price for all your hard work. May God bless and comfort your family and friends still in this world!