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Monday, October 6, 2008

Making It Fair

As a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh in 2003, I enrolled in a course entitled "The Sociology of Sports" more because I needed an easy A than because I needed a sociology class. I expected the sociology of sports to be the sociology of fan-dom. I was wrong. In fact, the main subject of study was the manner in which sports teams can be improved. The instructor, an entrepreneur who began his own consulting business, worked directly with professional sports teams. He analyzed every sociological aspect of the franchise -- from clubhouse atmosphere to the (im)balance between different sectors of the team. The hypothesis under which he worked was that all aspects of the franchise must come together in a balanced and logical way such that victory is the outcome. He analyzed defense, offense, management, and specialists on and off the field. At the core of his work was this fundamental question: how can I take an under-performing team and make it into a winner?

I aced the course, and the instructor wanted to hire me. Even though I had little sociological knowledge or technical know how, the core question struck a chord in me because the whole process of team improvement intrigued me. I was the Queen of Fair as a kid, often driven to tears by the simple fact that something was unfair, regardless of whether or not the outcome involved something I wanted. The idea of compromise didn't appeal to me, unless I judged it to be a fair compromise. In other words, I have never been easily appeased. The process of making losing teams into winners was a great outlet for my passion for fairness. I loved the challenge for all its complexities, and I loved the outcome. Making teams into champions was never the goal -- it was always to make them competitive to such a degree that they had the chance to be a champion.

The semester after I studied the sociology of sports, I embarked on my semester at sea, shifting my studies toward globalization, international development, and cultural studies. My obsession with fairness found a new outlet, one which was aimed at the ultimate practice in justice: the fairness of the human condition. Until I completed my bachelor's degree, my studies focused on the political history and development of Latin America. Now, my attention is turned more toward the economic and human factors of development, and I feel the same amount of excitement for the conundrum set before me that I did in 2003. When I gaze down at the pile of notebooks, articles, developmental theory textbooks, and scholarly essays that surround me, I see the pieces of a puzzle. I'm saddled with the responsibility of putting these pieces together in such a way that societies have the opportunity to be winners. A finished puzzle wouldn't be the next economic super power, it would be a society in which people are competitive to the degree that they have the chance to champion their own causes.

At first glance, it seems an obsession with baseball and football is a petty passion for a person involved in the study and practice of international development, but upon closer inspection you can see that the two interests are just different sides of the same coin. I want to know how to take that which fails to meet its potential and create opportunities it can seize with success. I've found two outlets for this challenge, but there are many more. The front office managers of weak professional sports teams aim to provide their team with the tools it needs to compete. Classroom teachers strive to give under-performing students the tools they need to realize their potential. Philanthropic foundations work to give struggling organizations and entrepreneurs the tools they need to succeed in their aims. In international development, the goal is to give countries, governments, societies, or individuals the tools they need to actualize the goals they value.

How do you take something that performs poorly and make it into a winner? The pervasiveness of this question appears rooted in the fact that there is no single answer. The question opens a Pandora's box of complex circumstances, and it seems innately human to find the fun in sifting through them in search of combinative solutions that lead to success.