SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/714252
FACILITY & OPERATIONS 26 SportsTurf | September 2016 www.sportsturfonline.com As sports turf managers, we interact with a variety people from the fi eld users to the owners to the many other interested parties. Typically, we are support staff that works for organizations whose primary businesses are something other than grass and dirt, such as education, government, or entertainment. The fi nancial guys usually see us as overhead. Within the organizations where we work, other departments compete with us for money, resources, recognition, and approvals. External to our organization are people such as the users of our facilities, donors, and the public at large, who have perceptions about us or our facilities, which may be correct or not. For our job security and peace of mind, we need to get along with everyone. Our stakeholders have diverse interests and agendas. Some of these agendas serve the common good; others serve someone's individual self-interest. To fully understand the politics of the organization, we must become acquainted with all of the participants and their agendas. And within every organization, some stakeholders' agendas seem to have more clout than others, including yours and mine. Most of us want to be in control of our jobs and not be ■ BY DON SAVARD, CSFM, CGM "Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes." —Oscar Wilde T here is a truth most sports turf managers recognize—that grass is more forgiving than people. Grass can be neglected, suffer wear and abuse, even mismanagement, and in most cases will recover nicely once it receives the care it requires. People, on the other hand, remember how they felt when they perceive that they were not treated well or did not receive what they wanted. Like it or not, getting along with people might be the major part of our job because successful sports turf management depends upon effective people skills. And whenever people come together, whether it is on the playground as children or in organizations as adults, some form of politics will result when they begin to interact. Politics (in the context of this article) can be described as forming alliances, protecting and advancing particular ideas or goals, and exercising power when and where necessary. The baseball field at the Salesianum School in Wilmington, DE THINGS I HAVE LEARNED FROM THE MISTAKES I HAVE MADE The politics of sports turf management