This year marks the 175th anniversary of the Oregon Trail. The 2,170-mile Oregon Trail and it’s offshoots were traveled by 350,000 people from 1846-1869. Historians estimate that of those 350,000 who started the trip, as many as 30,000 died along the way, or an average of 10-15 deaths per mile. This has led some to call the Oregon Trail “America’s longest graveyard.”
The main cause of death on the trail was disease with Cholera being the disease resulting in more illness and death than all of the other maladies experienced by the emigrants. In order to combat the spread of cholera, dysentery and other diseases, the popular preventive measure recommended by Catharine Beecher (half sister of author and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe) was to give every man, woman and child coffee.
The daily routine for pioneers was that before the wagon train got started on their journey for the day, the women of the camp would make coffee and everyone would drink it. Around the middle of the day, the wagons would need to have their wheels soaked in water (or recycled urine if in the desert) in order to expand the wood so that they would remain tight up against the iron rings). While the men did maintenance on the wagons, the women would make coffee. Finally in the evening, coffee again was the beverage of choice of everyone on the trail contrary to the advice of modern of sleep experts.
I’m sure by now you’re either wondering what about coffee prevents the spread of cholera and why Starbucks hasn’t included this in an ad campaign. The answer is that nothing about coffee specifically prevents cholera or any other communicable disease. The “secret sauce” was that by making coffee, pioneers were forced to boil their water ridding it of any microorganisms that may lead to disease.
What the pioneers had found was a system. It didn’t really matter that the beverage selected was coffee, what mattered is that the process required to make coffee resulted in the desired end result. One key to having successful programs is to start at the center with “what makes the boat go faster” and build systems around this concept. As you have systems, policies and procedures in place that are eliciting the desired results, you can continue to build out in concentric circles.
I liken systems to Zig Ziglar’s analogy of priming the pump. If you’ve ever used an old hand water pump you know that it takes a considerable amount of effort to draw the water up from the well but once you have it flowing, just a little effort will keep the water coming for as long as you want it do.
Running a profitable summer camp was a similar experience for me. When I first took over our program, how to get the word out, collect money, get someone to supervise the player-coaches, organizing the activities, etc., required some work. Once I had those things worked out from online registration to having a coach who could be the “director” to an expectation that seniors were our player-coaches and finally, having every station, game and activity on a laminated card that allowed us to “plug and play” activities/stations, it was really almost no work at all but still generated the same amount of revenue if not more than when we made the initial push to get started.
An example of this may be creating a “Champions Notebook” for your program. Having a system to maximize the result with committing a reasonable amount of resources is key here. If you assign each coach in your program one week of the notebook, it probably will only take a short time to create a comprehensive resource for your program.
Building systems in your program will help save you time and increase your impact on coaches and kids. Analyze what the most important things are in your program and how you can automate, delegate and replicate these outcomes.
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