A /venting post if there was one.
Two things are providing oodles of stress lately – work and coaching hockey. There are a surprising amount of similarities between both.
At work I’ve taken on some new responsibilities, and a large part of that is to replicate the culture I put in place elsewhere. The group I oversee now has their own culture, and one that really is a struggle to understand. They certainly have their hearts in the right place, but the approach taken is just full of grievances. Extremely valid ones. I’ve done a bit of digging and the history behind this is just full of interesting bits.
Coming into this I’m put in the middle of the process and find myself saying “no” on a daily basis, because rarely does it pass the sniff test. A fair chunk of this can be handled with some simple guides and training. It’s frankly surreal that I have to train people at this, given their current job titles, but at the same time it seems clear they’ve not had the necessary support in the past. If I can hit 80% of them taking a “smarter” way to tackle these big issues, that will have significant morale impacts.
As for hockey, we’re in a new league and a different approach to scheduling. Our first game is this Saturday, and the schedule is still undergoing daily updates. I have conflicts on Sunday, no practices from Nov until end of Jan, and games across town at 7am. I coach house league, and if the game is not fun, then people won’t play.
It does beg the question as to why this is so difficult though. People have been making sports schedules for over 100 years, using computers to do it since the 80s. It’s entirely likely this is just learning curve, and next year will be 100x better. Yet here it is also pretty clear that no one seems to have asked anyone how to make this work – checked with other leagues that have done this before. Previous years, it was all done in a single Saturday with all coaches in a large room. Somehow this new process is taking 3 weeks.
Enough venting for now. Time to breathe.
Leo's Life 