“Less-wrong” isn’t the same as right
Not so fun fact: There was a time not long ago when a Paralympian winning a gold medal at the Paralympic Games was worth about 20% of an Olympian winning an Olympic gold medal.
A lot of people had a lot of reasons why that was true. But, if you think about it, it’s not exactly the kind of message that should be sent to athletes representing the country, and for that matter, all people with disabilities.
When I joined the USOPC (United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee - and it was actually the USOC when I joined) Board of Directors, I had a strong positive view of the value of the Paralympics and the athletes. After all, Classroom Champions had Paralympians as mentors in schools for years before I joined the board.
Fortunately, I wasn’t alone; the board of directors generally agreed that some kind of improvement was necessary. The question was: what improvement exactly?
The facts were that Paralympians, people who were either born with a physical disability (there are a class or two with cognitive impairments as well) or had something take place that caused a disability, felt lesser. And that feeling was well-earned considering the lack of financial support, being told by USOC leadership they should be happy with what they were given (I even carried the water on that one for the former CEO - that’s a-whole-nother story), and that they didn’t deserve more compensation because their viewership wasn’t as large and their sponsors weren’t as supportive.
This disparity was a constant issue and rightfully so. It also derailed being able to get other important work done. And I say that without ranking importance, per se, between priorities.
And then, the opportunity arose to do something about it.
I still vividly remember driving from my house in Calgary to the Smithbilt cowboy hat factory for a function that I was late for when I got a call from Katie, an athlete rep on the Athlete Advisory Council (AAC) leadership team. She was super stoked to update me that she, while working very hard for quite a while with a fellow board member of mine, felt confident in a new plan to bring Paralympian medal compensation up from that roughly 20% to 50% of Olympian compensation.
It’s what she’d been fighting for and was a HUGE leap forward. She felt like she’d won!
I pulled the car over. I said to her: “I think that’s a really bad idea.”
She was clearly unimpressed… until I explained where I thought they should go and that fixing a problem halfway isn’t actually fixing the problem.
Why would the organization spend all that time and money (it was going to cost millions) to tackle the problem halfway when we can spend, relatively speaking, a bit more to fix the problem fully and put it in the rearview mirror?
Fifty percent might have been an improvement, but it wasn’t enough. It still sent the message that a Paralympian is worth half an Olympian.
And that is both not okay and not functional when trying to move the organization’s focus onto new topics. In time, no one would remember that a modicum of improvement was made; they would only remember that Paralympians still weren’t equal and we’d need to repeat this process over again in a few years just to end up at parity anyway.
All that investment in Paralympians would have done was kick the can on a problem we knew would still be a problem when the glow wore off, likely just a few months later.
And so Katie and I kept talking. She explained the deeper feelings of where this was coming from and what problems she was trying to solve with financial equity. Hint: It wasn’t just about the money.
Katie and I then devised a very straightforward plan to augment the work she and others had done, to approach the board with the plan of 100% equal payments. When proposing to spend millions of dollars at a non-profit, the reasoning really needs to be sound. We proposed the ~40% more funding it would take to get to equality would:
Ensure Paralympians both felt and had the reality of equality, aka the right thing to do;
Ensure this pain point would not return and inevitably cost the organization more pain and money in the long run with our athletes, the public, and potentially the government. (see: risk mitigation)
For what was a modest investment in the grand scheme of the organization, not accepting “less-wrong” solved multiple problems. It took more time, politicking, and effort than the clear path to the short-term victory the 50% choice gave us but it was worth it and I’m glad we did it.
The decision made international headlines in 2018 both in the Paralympic world and in major outlets everywhere, like Money.com. It continued to be a good news story years later.
Having just completed my eight years of service and terming off the board, when I look back on my time, I feel a sense of pride and satisfaction for the level of effort I put into my roles there. I know more stories and examples like this will come to mind for years to come. Some I’ll share and some I’ll leave as memories for myself and those involved.
Now, there’s lots of stuff that I still think should have been done differently, or better. There are a lot of mistakes I made - some of which I’ll also gladly share as stories. But I know that I left it all on the field. I gave everything that I had within that span of time to give.
And there’s something really satisfying about that.
- Steve
