Do You Have Clearly Established Goals and Objectives for Your Athletic Program?
This question doesn’t necessarily reflect the mission of your athletic program, which is the overarching reason for being, but it allows stakeholders to measure the effectiveness of your program. You should know how to measure outcomes so that you are always on track toward something tangible.
This shouldn’t necessarily be a set of goals that you as the Athletic Director establish, but rather an exercise your Board of Directors and/or Upper Administration create. The reason for this is two-fold: first, they understand and are committed to high ideals for the school in a global sense. They have the entire school’s value in mind, and will set the athletic standards in line with the overall institution’s standards. Secondly, their involvement in this activity will establish buy-in and support, where they will be closer observers than they might be without ownership in the goal-setting process. Don’t look at this as a negative, or a potential threat to your job security! It should induce a true partnership toward outstanding athletics. It will also allow for honest dialogue if you as the athletic leader assess that some of the established goals and objectives are set too high, and need a higher level of support from the school, financial or otherwise.
As an example, my former school undertook this task. We were a private, Christian independent college preparatory school where the academic experience was outstanding. Our Board wanted athletics, which wasn’t necessarily at that same level, to aspire and achieve a growing level of excellence. It’s often complicated when you set goals for athletics, since winning and losing are always part of the discussion, yet come with preconceived notions, threats, opinions, and pressure. Our Board was comprised of wise and seasoned leaders, several who had athletic experiences of their own in high school and college. And they realized also that we had to be aspirational in our goals, yet realistic at the same time. So after much back and forth, they established four primary goals, in no particular order:
1) Consistently Finish in Top Half of League Play
2) Finish in the Top Quartile of Year-End Sportsmanship Voting in the Conference
3) Be in Contention for Post-Season Tournament Play
4) Maintain Significant Participation Percentage of Student Body
You can see that two of these goals were results-based, in terms of scoreboard and record. But they didn’t exactly put pressure on to win – it was implied, and probably more effective that way. The two other goals supported school ideals and objectives. We wanted to have teams and individuals establish a high level of decorum for the program, establishing that you should aspire to be successful (win!) and be a sportsman at the same time. There was also a commitment to the multi-sport athlete wrapped up in goal #4, since as a smaller school we relied on our student/athletes to participate in more than one sport. That reflected the school’s mission to cultivate balanced young men and women – body, mind, heart, and soul. The outcome of these objectives became the impetus for a very successful athletic experience, since as we worked toward these goals and objectives, and put in methods to help us execute them, we became very effective in the process of building successful athletics – and many of us believe that winning is a byproduct of a process done well.
In closing, it is vital that goals and objectives be established for athletic programs. They must exist so that Athletic Directors understand what outcomes are important to the school, and so that Athletic Directors can guide coaches toward an understanding of success in their particular culture. If coaches aren’t held to specific goals and objectives, they can begin to create their own definitions of success, and that is often not in the best interest in the overall institution. As I stated above, another positive result is that school leaders participate in the process so that they understand and support the process of athletic success. The result of this process is that all school leaders are on the same team – as a result, everyone wins!