Reinventing yourself is not easy.
That's why Wile E. Coyote never does manage to catch Roadrunner. He is locked in to doing things the way he has always done them. Even when he has a brilliant idea; backed by the laws of physics; with sound engineering and design; his ass always ends up under the ACME anvil.
The hardest part is starting out. As Goethe said:
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!”
Innovation and entrepreneurship need not be uncertain endeavours. They are based on economics; market structure; demographics and, as Peter Drucker referred to it, Weltanschauung, perceptions and moods.
According to Drucker, managers need to learn to practice systematic innovation. It consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic or social innovation.
Racing does not suffer for a dearth of opportunity. It suffers from a lack of effective management. The current circle jerk is either blind or apathetic to the problems that plague racing and unwilling to abrogate the status quo.
Managers are paid to exercise their best judgement as it pertains to the welfare of the organization. They are not expected to be infallible. They are, however, paid to realize and admit when they are wrong. A behavior more common in omission than practice.
The ideas exist. Pick one.
Implement it and see what happens. Run experiments vs control studies. Pick a meet, or several, and play with takeout. See what happens to handle. If handle goes up as takeout goes down, you might have something there. Try to control for confounders.
Gather the major entities and form a federation of sorts with a commissioner, or supreme leader, or high priest or whatever the hell you want to call it. Draft a two or three or five year charter, during which time the game is run as if it were under control of a single organization. Get serious people involved and work out a blanket structure. After the charter period expires, if nothing improved, go back to taking each other out at the knees.
Create a league or two or three. Graded races and then everyone else. Standardize distances. Establish some progression.
Do something. Pick one thing and do it.
I'll do it for you. I have the time.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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6 comments:
Oh, how you've been missed. Thanks!
Happy day! The Wind Gatherer returns with what the sport needs.
Have you considered that the "leaders" in this business are not smart? Too many Wily E Coyotes and too few Road Runners.
In the breeding end of the game, we can't even decide a proper Leading General Sire, like everyone else in the world can. I know for a fact that there is no effective leadership in the breeding business. None of the three trades -- DRF, BH, or TTimes -- has anyone on staff that really understands the business, either, and this is not to knock the good people who work there. But aside from John Sparkman at TTimes, no one was taught the skills or came in having them.
The same applies to the industry at large, although there are pockets here and there where occasionally you see glimpses of sharpness.
Maybe they will read this. Thanks.
Sid's right. I'm as appalled by the lack of vision and initiative in race track management as he is about the lack in the breeding business. There's just a chance that, if Jeff Seder wins control of the Maryland tracks, you might see the kind experimentation that's talked about here.
You have a cult following, you know that, don't you
Great to read your thoughts.
Have fun.
My word verification sounds like a word you might use: quileak
QQ/Anon-Thank you.
Sid/Steve-The Kondratiev Winter racing is in, cries out for effective management. I don't see how it can survive without a certain amount of destruction. And that is a concept nobody seems to want to accept.
Ernie-I missed you most of all Scarecrow.
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