Contribution recognition and sports organizations

September 7th, 2010

It takes many people to pull off a season of sports successfully.

It is ironic that, often in my observation,  the better the contribution to that successful sports season the less recognition that contribution gets.

For example; the first four years my son was in soccer all of the soccer fields he played on were mud pits by the last half of the season because we live in the rainy pacific northwest. At some point the fields mostly seems to stay relatively mud free through most or all of each season. The value of this to all concerned was huge. Despite this value the contribution was not noticed at a conscious level and it certainly got no recognition or thanks.

The point is that while we may “get away” with not giving recognition for contributions, both the team spirit and the likelihood that the contribution will continue are much less without recognition in my experience.

At Bonzi we know our role and our contribution in most of the sports organizations we serve and only need one kind of recognition; that our teams continue to use our software every year. Sure, we like and want other forms of recognition but we really only need and hope for continued use of the software. Continued use really says it all to us.

Consider taking a look around at all that it takes to run a successful sports season and making that extra effort if you don’t already to acknowledge and recognize the wide variety of contributions that made the season possible. I have been impressed by some of the coaches and parents at the season end pizza parties that lightly but thoroughly cover many and maybe even most of the contributions, large and small, that made a season possible. I’ve also notices the smiles and glow coming from people who thought that their minor contribution had not been seen when to their delight they got a bit of recognition.

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What Puts The Team in Sports Team Software?

July 13th, 2010

Team is a term that is thrown around so loosely that you’d think all you have to do to get a team together is to just say the word “team” and voila, you’d have a team… whatever that is.

When you search “team” on the www.amazon.com website in the books category you get approximately 172,000 results returned; obviously the world struggles with “team” otherwise why all the darn books?

So just what does put the team into sports team software? In my observation it’s when two conditions are met: 1) everyone has a shared goal that excites each and every person and 2) all proposed members of the team believe, to some degree, that achievement of that goal is possible … even if it’s not precisely probable.

What we’ve found is that if you got those two things going for you, you can skip all 172,000+ of the books, the seminars, and all the other whoo-haa about teams… because you will have a team. See, what we’ve found, and your mileage may vary, is that when you have a goal that everyone shares, is excited about it and believes that it is possible to achieve even if it might be hard work… then a team naturally and easily forms; that’s what puts the team in sports team software.

There is, of course, a bit more to the software part of the story. The one major threat to a team is a lack of communication. The Bonzi sports team software makes it a breeze to communicate with one or many teams, one or many team members and allows you to do so impromptu, automatically or both.

The bottom line is that as a leader it’s really you that put’s the “team” in sports team software. Yeah, Bonzi is here to help you keep the “team” in sports team software but only you can get it there to start.

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Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), Concussions and Sports

July 8th, 2010

The world of sports, especially boxing, soccer and football, for both children and adults is only recently becoming broadly aware of the causes and effects of brain damage in sports. With this new awareness parents, coaches, volunteers and organizers are now realizing the following about Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE):

  • It is a result of concussions, particularly multiple concussions
  • Most CTE happens to people who sustain trauma over many years – but can also develop from repeated trauma in rapid succession where the brain has not had time to heal between events.
  • In most cases the onset of CTE happens later in life

In our culture we value being competitive to such a degree that both children and adults often feel internal and external pressure to just “shake off” the experience and “get back in there” only to take another hit often due to now slowed reflexes.

I’ve heard neurologists suggest that a solid concussion essentially tears portions of the brain apart. In many cases a player may not suffer adverse effects if they are allowed to take the weeks or months for the brain to recover. All too often though a lack of understanding has coaches and parents allowing, and even encouraging, a child to get back into the game long before their brain is fully healed.

Sadly these oversights can set up a child for a long term struggle with pain and loss of function that doesn’t always show up until long after the event and is therefore often not directly tied to the events that caused the condition. In some cases children have been known to suddenly collapse and die, while in other cases it can take from 12 – 16 years before major symptoms appear.

Boxing and football get the most attention as sports that have a high incidence of CTE. The condition was originally thought of as mainly a risk of a long boxing career. Football has had its share of CTE with the advances in helmets dramatically limiting skull fracture but doing little to limit CTE. At least 5 prep football players are reported to die each year during the season with an undetermined number suffering symptoms long after the football season.

With the World Cup taking center stage it is appropriate to also mention that there is a rapidly growing awareness of concussion in soccer and its potential for causing CTE.

Sadly a true diagnosis for CTE can only occur after death as the result of a brain autopsy.

Please do your homework for the sake of all the sports participants in your life and on your teams.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Discussion

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Parent Perspective On Youth Sports

July 1st, 2010

Parents are the key enabler to kids regular participation in any sport such as soccer, football, baseball, lacrosse, etc.

Kids can’t pay the fee’s, arrange the transportation, juggle the competing demands of a family’s  schedule and all the other things that have to come together for a kid to participate in a sport.

Anymore it seems more and more unusual that only one parent in a two parent household can stay home and stay on top of all the logistics to make it happen. in many and maybe most families both parents work and depending on the size of the city or the nature of the work both parents are lucky to get home by dinner time let alone time to get a child a snack, make sure they have everything they need and get them off to practice or a game.

Today it seems that there are more than a few single parent households where the work must come first because it is the only source of income and there is no easy safety net if traffic is bad one day or the boss insists on work into the evening on the day of the big game or the crucial practice (aren’t they all?).

Despite all these challenges parents do their level best, in my observation, to do what it takes to get and keep their kids in sports simply because it is so central to a happy, healthy and well adjusted upbringing in this world. Ask many adults what their fondest memories of growing up were and I’ll bet a role in sports is one of the top three of the fondest memories.

So what’s the point? The point is that we all benefit from happy, healthy and well adjusted kids no matter our age or circumstances. These kids are our nations and the worlds future. This blog post is simply a plea for us all to look around and pitch in when we can to help each other get as many kids into sports as possible. I can’t do anything significant about the national debt, terrorists, or the price of beans in Beirut… but I can keep my eyes open and be sensitive enough to volunteer to provide a ride, give a word of encouragement, or volunteer my logistical support to help out a coach so that the most kids possible get to participate.

Bonzi sports software’s role is simple; we make it easy, fun and very, very affordable. We know that the harder it gets for parents and all the other caring folks who selflessly give to support kids participation the fewer kids get to play. Bonzi sports software can only make the sports registration, scheduling, coach background checking, rostering, and websites easy, fun and affordable… but we think that’s a lot. Beyond that it’s the coaches, volunteers and those dedicated parents who put their plans in second place in favor of the future of their kids.

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Goals, Resources and Time; What it Means for Clubs, Leagues and other Sports Organizations

June 30th, 2010

One of the most startling things my father ever said to me as I was growing up was “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach”. Being very visual this statement hit me with both the “Yuck” factor of the image and the conviction that the metaphor was spot on in the situation at hand in my life.

24 – 7 – 365; All any of us has is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days in a year. Exactly how many years each of us might be lucky enough to get  persists as one of the primary questions in any life. Given all this we can only accomplish so much with our precious time. If this is so then why are we so loath to write down and commit to goals… that are somewhat realistic AND that we reasonably might have the resources to accomplish?

The power of “and”. Last summer I sent my then 16 year old son on a three week Outward Bound adventure. We were warned that the adventure would entail carrying a heavy pack for 10 + miles each day over rugged terrain. To get him ready I thought of all sorts of complicated exercise routines but in the end decided to opt for something simple that had a high likelihood of actually happening often enough that the end result would be a level of conditioning that would allow my moderately sedentary son to have a good time and not hate me the rest of his long life. At first I was just going to have him walk home from school each day; nice, simple and likely to happen. The magic was the power of the “and”. Each day he took a pack with him to school and each week we added 5 pounds to the pack so by the last week prior to his Outward Bound departure he was carrying 60 lbs for 2.5 miles each day.

So why am I telling you this? Because for once in my life I got real about the: 1) goal, 2) resources and 3) time that we had to accomplish something. Had I made this complex my son would not have been prepared for what turned out to often be 10+ hours of walking each day and often more than 10 miles over steep terrain including snow. As it turned out my son was by far the most physically fit kid on the trip and as a result he had a truly life changing experience.

The key was two-fold; first we got real and clear about what our goal, resources and time was for the mission at hand, second we kept it simple enough to get done but not so simple that it didn’t meet the need; we included the powerful “and” of both the walking and the gradually increasing weight in the pack.

Too often I fail and see others fail when we don’t get real with people in sports and recognize the reality of our goals, resources and time… and as a result we don’t accomplish anything other than creating chaos and frustration. Workout routines that are simple and have limited objectives can often achieve most of our goals for a sport while staying within our resource limits and the little time most modern schedules can allocate.

At Bonzi sports software we too are faced with being real about our goals, resources and time. As one of the fastest growing sports software companies in the world (according to our consultant) our growth consumes resources and time along with our commitment to world-class support, providing the best sports registration software, sports scheduling software, team website software enabled with an easy-to-use content manager all in a no contract customer relationship. All this comes back to our goal; a great and frustration free experience for our dedicated volunteers, administrators and parents associated with sports such as soccer, football, basketball, baseball, softball, lacrosse, hockey , little league and volley ball.

We have found that if we keep it simple and real we can leverage the power of the “and” thereby both delivering a great experience every day for our clients and growing faster than any of our competitors without losing clients.

So what do you think? Are we achieving our objective?

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Sports and Recognition

June 29th, 2010

My 17 year old son is cleaning out his bedroom to prepare for a busy summer and to be ready to hit the ground running for his senior year in high school. This whole process reminded me of the new movie Toy Story 3 where the boy is getting ready to move away from home and go to college. My son and the Toy Story 3 boy were both at the beginning of transitions and both were packing up the remnants of the past in preparation for the future.

Having seen the Toy Story 3 movie tuned my awareness up for boxes marked “Store in Attic” and “Give Away”. I noticed my son too had a box marked “Store in Attic”… I just had to peak to see what prize had escaped the trip to Goodwill and was getting stored for a shot at another day. To my surprise a significant portion of those things being saved for the future was his collection of “participation” trophy’s from kindergarten on. Alas, my son has never been nor really wanted to be a competitor; he was just out to have fun and be part of the team. Still the recognition represented by the trophy must have meant something to him.

In the science of motivation we know that recognition is a powerful motivator for people to try harder, work harder and to have vastly more persistence than is likely without recognition. For many a kid the recognition that comes from a coach, other parents and a $2 trophy is all the recognition that they are likely to get in life. To my way of thinking this is one of the foundational values that make youth sports so very, very important in our culture regardless which game is played.

At Bonzi sports software we support the concept of recognition a couple of important ways. First we know that having your picture on a sports website or a video on your sports website is a powerful motivator. To support that Bonzi sports software allows for unlimited space so that coaches and volunteers can post all the pictures they want without being asked to pay more. We also make sure that we keep the cost of registration down without asking the sports club or league to compromise on what they get from the software. Finally, Bonzi sports software is unique in all sports software in that we have a content management system that makes it easy and fast for a volunteer or administrator to quickly post and title new photos or videos.

We know that appropriate recognition drives both effort and self-esteem in kids. When kids know how to go beyond their initial limits and the develop great self-esteem we know that our world will be a better place for everybody.

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Game Theory and Penalty Kicks in Soccer

June 24th, 2010

In keeping with the spirit of World Cup Soccer I want to pass on this little tidbit recently reported on the Freakonomics Podcast… it turns out that game theory almost explains penalty kicks.

As I’m sure you know a right footed kicker tends to kick a penalty kick to the left and left footed kickers to the right. Clearly the goalie would know the difference in advance. Also, as you may recall, in World Cup Soccer the penalty kicks are so powerful that the goalie literally has to make their choice of which direction they are going to jump before the ball has left the foot of the kicker.

Generally a goalie is better off trying to jump to the right for a left footed kicker and to the left for a right footed kicker… generally. Overall, however, the kicker would, mathematically speaking, score more often if they just kicked the ball straight ahead… but that rarely happens? Why?

It turns out that looking good is more important than scoring. See, in the calculus of a World Cup Soccer players life kicking the ball straight ahead on a penalty kick and having the ball easily caught or defended is viewed as a major sin. In fact they say it is such a sin that a World Cup level player actually could lose a sponsor over it. So even though they would score more often if they just kicked straight ahead it rarely happens because it just pays to worry first about how you look in World Cup soccer than if you score.

For the rest of us who don’t stand to lose a sponsorship you might want to try to just kick straight at the goal with your penalty kicks knowing that the math is on your side.

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Where to point the finger for performance on or off the field

June 8th, 2010

Blame just feels right in so many cases. The big question is does it get us anywhere in reality? I suggest it doesn’t usually move anyone towards the things they want on or off the field in sports.

Let’s take little league from the perspective of the coach for example. If the team loses more often than the coach thinks they should given what he or she knows of the teams average skill level who or what is to blame? Blame the kids for (fill in the blank) until the cows come home and what will really change; nothing in my experience. By contrast if the coach looks in the mirror and realizes that the practice sessions have not done enough to condition the kids and balls keep getting dropped then conditioning and drills may be in order.

So you say Duh… everyone knows that in little league sports! So if thats true… why so much noisy complaint and yelling at the kids?

The experts out there tell us that we complain anytime there is a gap between what we want and what we are getting. More specifically when we complain we usually do so in one or more of the following three ways:

  1. Complaints for recreation – it’s a social lubricant and a way of aligning on values
  2. Expressive complaints – we just have to get it off our chest but don’t want or expect that anything will be done about it
  3. Complaints for action – we want and expect that something will happen and happen soon

Discerning which complaint you are making is tough and figuring out what other people are doing seems almost impossible much of the time.

In my experience the key is to simply ask; what are the possibilities that you think we should consider looking at to address this concern? That statement usually pulls out which of the three types of complaints are occurring and what you might need to do about it. I go so far as to ask myself the question so I can get clarity… if I really think these kids can do better in their little league baseball game then what action(s) would most likely yield the needed results in the relevant time-frame?

Once I know that then I know it is up to me to take the action or shut up and put up…unless I am just complaining for recreation or to blow off steam… and even then I need to make sure that my complaining isn’t doing harm to those around me who can’t figure out what my intent is with all my noise.

Does this line up with your experience?

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Major and minor league

June 3rd, 2010

Major league vs. minor league; they do all the same things they just do them a bit differently.

A friend is an amazing golfer. Some of his well healed friends not only encouraged him to turn pro but offered to give him the money so he could attend the PGA “school” to qualify for the PGA Tour. Despite routinely playing par or better golf 98% of the time he said, he didn’t feel that he was good enough for the PGA. I asked him why and his answer surprised me. He said it came down to one word: consistency. From his point of view the worst guy on the PGA tour who was making a good living was much more consistent over time than my friend thought he could be. During his off hours he had worked at improving his consistency but had hit a ceiling that he could not get beyond in his opinion.

If you look closely at the elite vs. the average in any endeavor there are many differences and most of them come from consistent dedication to doing the work necessary to achieve the goal in my observation. Now you probably think I’m going to talk about Bonzi sports software or how kids can go from rec to traveling or some other high minded encouragement to go beyond. I could do that and I’d love to do that but it won’t be so today.

Today I’m going to just talk about the dedication to the magic of having fun with sports. The wrinkle here is that it does take dedication and focus to get the most fun out of sports in my experience. So what do I mean?

First, relax. If any of this were that serious you would have been notified by official correspondence. Second focus on the bright sports; what’s working well? Do more of that and magically it seems so many of the other things get better on their own. Third, just have the goal of having the most fun possible – a key to this is simply asking out loud and asking often… what could we do better next time to make this more fun. If you listen and ask often enough I suspect you’ll be pleased with the answers your brain gives you. Consider going above and beyond in the area of basic fitness. And finally whatever you decide to do and however you decide to do it consider taking a bit of extra effort to be consistent i.e. set a productive and effective pattern in how you approach the sport and stay with it for the whole season.

For some reason being consistent adds remarkable value for all sports in my experience.

To say more would just complicate things; try being a pro at having fun with sports no matter your level… and see what magic being consistent can do for your fun when it comes to sport and life.

OK… I did have to mention that when it comes to sports software that Bonzi is amazingly consistent at many things but probably nothing more than the fact that our support is consistently rated as wonderful and that we put your money directly into your bank account every day. Those are points of consistency that our customers say they LOVE.

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A Key Question in Coaching

May 12th, 2010

I have a dear friend who hit the workplace lottery big and got to retire early; lucky guy (actually he had great ideas, worked very hard at something he loved and had a bit of luck too).

He took the passion that made him a successful business person to being a volunteer coach. By all accounts he was overall a very good coach with one exception; he yelled to the point of almost berating the kids. While that level of passion might have been OK in the corporate world (even there I have my doubts) it seemed to me to really take the shine off of his otherwise superb coaching contribution.

In sports and in life I’ve discovered powerful question that I usually reserve for my own behavior but occasionally have the guts to trot out when I hear a coach going beyond the pale with kids… or even other adults. That question is “What were you trying to accomplish with what you said” followed by “If it was to motivate and inspire you might want to consider taking another tact”.

Soccer, baseball, football, lacrosse, swimming and any other sport you can name seems to get there share of parents and coaches that somehow think that yelling derogatory and at times obscene things at kids has a prayer of accomplishing some positive result. Yes, you might get a change in behavior but often at huge cost… a cost that to me if rarely worth it.

Being passionate and giving instruction is yelled is not what I’m talking about. Done right that often does inspire a kid and helps them be there best. The positive expectation that is shown with that kind of behavior has been shown to create an emotional safety zone for kids AND pushes them to more fully realize there potential.

At Bonzi sports software we have an amazing customer support staff and we are deeply grateful for it. They treat each person who calls with respect, grace and infinite patience. There folks have to simultaneously seem as though they have nothing else in the world to do other than help a volunteer who has never used anything more complicated than a typewriter 40 years ago in college get a sports registration system and a team website up and running to the satisfaction of some fairly sophisticated kids, parents and fellow volunteers… while getting the support delivered quickly enough to serve numerous clients each day.

These people on the Bonzi sports software staff are dedicated and show each day, I’m convinced, to do there level best. By the same token, I believe, that kids show up on the field each day to do there level best… given there overall circumstances. I cannot imagine anyone in there right mind yelling derogatory comments at the Bonzi sports software staff and expecting that it would improve their performance any more than I can imagine yelling at another person, adult or kid, in a derogatory fashion and expecting a positive result.

The key is to know that, from my perspective, everybody gets out of bed in the morning with serious intent to do their best given their circumstances. Those circumstances can be lots of negative self-talk about their ability to perform, a hurting knee, having had a big fight with a parent, or any other of ten million possible things that could take a person off track from delivering their best performance.

I’ll always be grateful to those coaches who had ultra high positive expectations for me when I played sports and would never accept my excuses for doing anything but my best. The fact that it was delivered in a positive almost demanding fashion did not demean me but rather showed me that they could see what I could become and had faith that together we could get there.

If you find your passion taking you to the dark side a bit for whatever reason consider giving that passion a twist towards positive expectation instead. After all, if you yelled at your co-workers I doubt that you would expect there performance to increase would you? The key question for me is “What was I trying to accomplish with what I said” . If what is said in any way belittles a person you might want to consider a different tact.

What has your experience been getting kids or adults to go beyond what they thought possible on the field?

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