Steve Krah of the Elkhart Truth (newspaper in Indiana) wrote online: „More and more, catchers at the college and high school levels are seen peeking — or even staring — in the dugout to get the sign from a coach.
While some programs let their pitchers and catchers manage their own games, many others — especially NCAA Division I schools — take that off the battery mates’ plates.
Notre Dame pitching coach Chuck Ristano calls nearly every pitch as well as pick-off tosses and pitch-outs and sets the defense for the Irish.
`I want (the pitcher and catcher) to have some element of ownership in the game, but the reality is we have access to a lot more information than the kids do (like tendency and hitter spray charts),’ Ristano said. `We just want them to focus on executing their pitch.`’
Notre Dame employs a numbers system that is flashed to the catcher, who then consults a wristband chart that suggests which pitch and part of the strike zone to throw the pitch.“
„Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James says head coach David Blatt wanted him to inbound the ball on the final play of Sunday’s Game 4 but he overruled the coach. Instead, James hit a game-winning jumper as time expired to give the Cavaliers an 86-84 series-tying win.
`To be honest, the play that was drawn up, I scratched it,’ James told reporters. `I just told coach, Give me the ball. We’re either going to go to overtime or I’m going to win it for us. It was that simple.
`I was supposed to take the ball out,’ James continued. `I told coach, There’s no way I’m taking the ball out, unless I can shoot it over the backboard and it goes in. I told him, Have somebody else take the ball out, give me the ball, and everybody get out of the way.’”
In the German military context, independent deviation from the Auftrag – mission – is permitted and expected, if the situation on the ground has changed, demands a rapid response, and the commanding officer cannot be reached.
The overall mission, however, may not be re-interpreted. The tactical approach is always subject to modification. This presupposes that the junior officers and their troops are fully informed of the overall strategy which the mission serves, allowing them to choose the best path to the goal.
Those considering deviation need to ask themselves: „How would I as the commanding officer react to the changes on the ground?“ Critical is acting in accordance to the spirit of the Auftrag, the mission.
‘Not macht erfinderisch’ or “necessity is the mother of invention”. Not – necessity – forces one to become creative, to work in a disciplined way, to draw on resources carefully. Process oriented thinking is the logical response to working with limited resources. One could say “necessity is the mother of processes”.
The most popular kind of food in Germany is the potato. Imported from Latin America at the end of the 1700s in response to severely limited food supplies in Germany, the potato was a perfect fit: has high nutritional content, grows in poor soil, is resilient in erratic climates.
It was the Prussian king who had heard about the oddly shaped vegetable. At first the German people did not respond to the potato, even though hunger had become widespread. The king decided to appeal to the inclination of his subjects to challenge authority.
Fences were built around the potato fields, guards were posted. The people became curious. It didn’t take long for the first thieves to recognize the value and versatility of the potato. Today’s German cuisine could not exist without that once strange object from a far away land.
Klein, small. Staaterei, many states. From roughly 1650 until 1850 Germany consisted of some 350 independent states, most very small, with only a few kingdoms such as Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony. The Kaiser had little direct power over this patchwork of states. His influence was reduced to that of a moderator.
While England and France were well advanced in becoming unified centralized states, Germany remained a country of loosely affiliated independent territories. And although many of these territories developed their own modern governmental bodies, there was little progress made to coordinate or integrate them at the national level.
One of the causes of the German Kleinstaaterei was the German tradition of inheritance which divided up possessions among all male heirs, and not the just the oldest. This led to more and smaller states. Complicating matters was the tradition of dividing up the inheritance equally. This led to the creation of non-contiguous states with en- and exclaves.
Although two large states were formed – Prussia led by the Hohenzollern dynasty and Austria-Hungary led by the Hapsburg dynasty – both had non-contiguous territories which made it difficult for Germany to consolidate as a nation-state similar to England and France.
The German Bund – created after the Napoleonic Wars – reduced the Kleinstaaterei to just under 40 independent states. But it wasn‘t until 1871 when Germany finally became a nation-state in the modern sense after Prussia defeated France and declared itself a Reich. In the years before the Franco-Prussian War, Prussia had consolidated most of the German states via war.
“I wonder if Germans think their WiFi-issues are a global thing”. That’s how one of my friends from the USA recently expressed his opinion towards the WIFI situation in Germany. They alluded to the impossibility to find free public WIFI in big German cities.
No wonder, since you can even find free mobile internet in the middle of the Israeli desert, in Estonian forests, on top of lonely Georgian mountains and along the highways in California. However, you won’t be able to find it in German pedestrian areas.
One reason for this lack of WiFi access is a legal situation. The provider of the free Wlan is legally responsible for the inevitable misbehavior of the users; the so-called “Stoererhaftung” (liability for disturbance).
But there is more behind it: The term “Neuland” (unknown territory) circulated a while ago, used by Angela Merkel at a meeting with President Obama, in context with the Internet. However, she did by no means mean the invention “Internet” itself, but rather figuratively the Internet as legal terrain.
The existing German legal status is just not sufficient to regulate the Internet, which is a contradiction in itself. Simultaneously, legislation works slowly and thus is even less able to keep up with such rapid changes.
Therefore, the basic dilemma becomes clear: Many Germans (The German institutions, for one) appreciate changes to be clear, regulated and with obvious roles and responsibilities. And in the event of doubt with distinct legal liability.
In general, changes are usually dealt with slowly but thoughtfully. Thus, if this attitude applies to an uncontrollable and rapidly spreading phenomena such as the Internet, conflict naturally develops.
German reservation does not solve such conflicts until an explicit and waterproof regulation has been found. But, this manner leads to satisfactory results of the changing process most of the time because „gut Ding will Weile haben“ (“Good things are worth waiting for“).
In a parliamentary democracy the government is created out of and by the parliament. It is dependent on the support of the parliamentary party factions. The government, created by a majority coalition in the parliament, can also be deposed via a vote of Mißtrauen, mistrust. On the one side this gives the parliament a high degree of control over the government. On the other, however, the government can only govern by passing laws, which in turn requires strict discipline among the coalition parties in the parliament.
The presidential system is a different approach to democratic government. It‘s government – or administration, the executive branch of government – is elected directly by the people, and is therefore independent of the legislative branch, the Congress (Senate, House).
The United States is the most prominent example of the presidential system. There are also democratic forms of government which have aspects of both the parliamentary and presidential systems, such as France.
Germany is a classic parliamentary democracy. With one exception, federal elections have never produced a party with an absolute majority. Governments are always based on a coalition of two parties, who elect a chancellor to form a government. The chancellor then, in close negotiation with the coalition partners, chooses members for the cabinet. Traditionally these are the most powerful leaders of the coalition parties in the largest German states. They are power brokers in their own right and are considered to be capable of replacing the chancellor at any time.
Since all laws must be passed by a majority of the parliament, the government and its majority coalition in the parliament must work closely together. Any failure to pass a law is a clear signal of a possible break in the coalition.
Should the government, however, misuse its power over and against its colleagues in the parliament, the parliament can at any time dissolve the government via a vote of mistrust, which in turn leads to new elections. The government, should it not have the necessary support of parliament, has the same power to dissolve the parliament and force new elections.
In this sense, the chancellor‘s power is based on close cooperation not only with those cabinet members with their own independent political power base, but also with the influential factions in the parliament. The German chancellor is in the cabinet a primus inter pares, a first among equals.
In 1996 the Germans decided to revise their rules for spelling (orthography). In 2004 and 2006 there were further revisions. In 2007 the changes became binding in all schools.
One of the goals was to modify (eindeutschen – germanize) those words rooted in a foreign language. Apoteke instead of Apotheke (pharmacy). Restorant instead of Restaurant. Katastrofe instead of Katastrophe.
The pushback from the Ministries of Education in several influential German states blocked it, however. But protests were also loud among the press, in important literary circles and among academia. The high point was when the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) rejected the modifications and returned to the former rules of spelling.
In 2007 the attempt was made to implement the changes in the school system. Consistency was the overall goal. Certain spelling modifications could be ignored, however, if they simply made no sense.
Long and difficult consensus-building. Conscious ignoring of decisions made. Resistance to any kind of change. All this was at play in the German attempt to modify their rules for spelling.
Sabine Krome, a Member of the Council for German Spelling Reform at the fifteenth anniversary of the reform:
“The original intention of the reform was good. To bring German rules for spelling up to date, which had not been modified over the previous one hundred years. Had we known, however, how difficult the path would be to reach the results we have, it may have been better to wait another hundred years before taking on the task.”
A command, an order, an Auftrag are all forms in which military commanders communicate their intent. They are different in character, however. Commands and orders are strict, well defined, to be executed as stated. An Auftrag is the least strict in the sense of prescriptive, of defining the how as well as the what.
A command or order allows for little freedom in defining the how. A command defines the what and the how in detail. An Auftrag describes only the goal, thus allowing freedom to choose the best path to it. An Auftrag communicates intent, clearly and within the broader strategic context.
Depending on the situation, the line between an order and an Auftrag is in flux. The core of an Auftrag is the what. It can, though, include parameters such as the when and the where. The more detailed an Auftrag is about the how, the more it takes on the character of a command or order.
How a society fundamentally defines the everyday working relationship between leader and led – between two levels of hierarchy – is imbedded in how that society feeds itself. In companies engaged in commerce.
If that working relationship does not function well, if it fails, not only is the respective project in jeopardy, the ability of companies to meet the needs of their customers is at risk. Defining and managing the line between strategy and tactics is in the business context critical to the profitability of every team within every commercial enterprise.
The American business tradition in practice involves a close working relationship between leader and led, between team lead and team.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of an American company, for example, is the leader of the company. He or she manages directly the other managing board members, such as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), the Chief Operations Officer (COO).