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Every now and again I come across something that captivates me and leaves me wanting to know more...

I was first introduced to Complexity Theory and the work of Professor Dave Snowden by Al Smith at www.myfastestmile.com when we were delivering a seminar together in South Africa. At the time I remember that Al had a group of coaches wrestling with the conept and I was definitley one of them.

Having said that it was something that interested me and although I didn't totally get it I knew that it was something I needed to know more about. I made a mental note to learn more.

I was researching creativity and decison making on You Tube recently and discovered this seminar delivered by Professor Snowden thinking that I would see what it was about and take away a couple of nuggets. 70 odd minutes later and I was still rewinding the video so that I could take down the latest nugget that he had just uttered.

I highly recommend watching this talk if you have the time but if you haven't got and hour and a half to spare I have summarised the talk by sharing my field notes interspersed with some of the big takeaways underneath this video.

Enjoy!

"Humans are basically pattern based intelligences. Not information processing machines".

"We basically evolved to make decisions very quickly based on partial data. Using half remembered memories of our own. And the vicarious memories of other people which we hear through stories or what are called 'micro narratives'".

We make sense of the world by being exposed to situations repeatedly and recognising the patterns. Without exposure to these scenarios enough times we do not have the opportunity become skilled at the pattern recognition.

Does this mean that players who can 'read the game' are actually players who have a lot of exposure to similar scenarios and can recognise patterns quickly?

If this is the case then perhaps we need to have talent systems which are all about scenario exposure so that players can begin to recognise patterns and develop solutions to what they recognise.

Adaptation is a linear evolution in biology. It can take a long time but it is shorter than we think

Epigenetics is showing this

"If you give bright mice, dumb mice to bring up, the children of the dumb mice are bright!"

Culture changes chemicals which activate or deactivate DNA. Within 1 or 2 generations, culture can change biology!

Significant changes can be 'exaptive' instead of 'adaptive'.

'Exaptive change' is when a particular set of characteristics or behaviours are repurposed due to a change in the ecological environment.

"The cerebellum in apes evolved fine motor skills to enable the ape to pick seeds from within seed pods. This fine motor skill ability then exapted to become speech and grammar".

We all want to develop players or athletes that can 'adapt' to situations or circumstances but how can we encourage more 'exaptations' where players explore totally novel ways of overcoming a challenge. Do our current development environements encourage this or are we focussed on 'the basics' or 'the fundamentals' which means that we discourage genuine creativity.

Most innovation happens at the elite level and then trickles down to the lower levels once it becomes 'acceptable' (think of Sonny-Bill Williams , one hand off load in Rugby or Kevin Pietersen's 'flamingo shot' in cricket.

How many of those techniques would have come from one of our talent environments?

"If you use high abstract, symbolic scenarios things will associate in completely novel ways. If you use concrete problem solving scenarios you will get good solutions with known capability against existing problems but you won't get completely novel ones!"

Are we sacrificing the emergence of completely novel solutions that might give us the point of difference in favour of functional solutions that achieve a certain level of competence but won't be world class?

Is this why so many world class performers emerge from outside of NGB pathways rather than through them because they are free to explore solutions that are thrown up by the challenges of their environment?

"The idea that human systems are like manufacturing is very dangerous."

"We are shifting from an engineering model of human systems to an ecological model".

Have some of our talent systems become too mechanical? Are we actually working against ourselves by putting kids into system that is obsessed with technical outcomes and overcoaches them when we would be better to create environments that force players to develop novel solutions and watch them emerge?

We need scenerios which foster 'co-adaptation' and 'co-evolution'. This process develops resilience...the organism or system can experience shock and recover.

"Resilience is surviving change without loss of identity. Robustness is just surviving without change".

Systems become hyper specialised and then when the system receives any shock it collapses catastrophically.

That is the process that human systems go through unless you deliberately disrupt the system.

This makes me think of Alex Ferguson who deliberately disrupted the Man Utd team when things became too comfortable. I think he instinctively knew that he had to use controlled disruption to ensure that the system adapted which then made it resilient and developed sustained success?

Some of this might have been forced upon him but I can't imagine that level of success for that long without some design in the background.

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Nobody has innovated by following industrial best practice.

'Imitating a dominant predator makes you a jackal' all you do is end up serving the dominant predator

How many sports organisations look to the organisation that is top of the tree and seek to emulate them? As long as this continues the top organisation will always prevail. Seek to find new solutions by breaking convention and being brave enough to explore approaches that are not immediately obvious.

Types of system

Ordered system - fixed constraints - everything is very predictable, lots of 'rules'. It can be excessive.

Complex system - Adaptive - partial constraints. Use a lot of 'heuristics' - 'rules of thumb not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect but sufficient for the immediate goals'.

Heuristics can be mental short cuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision.

Chaotic system - No constraints - complete randomness. Nothing is connected to anything else. It won't happen for very long. Humans will create order.

Most aim for an ordered system as they want simplicity and structure. This feels comfortable but actually comfort is the exact opposite of what you want if you aim to innovative and challenge convention. If you are looking to maximise potential in any sports organistion you should embrace complexity as that will lead to adaptive behaviours which can take advantage of emerging dynamic situations.

Can we use chaos to take advantage of the natural human disposition to create order and in so doing encourage self organisation towards complexity?

We can't say, "if you do this it will produce that effect". We can say, "if you do things like this it is likely to produce effects like these."

Future states can't be defined but you can map the present. We move from measuring goals to measuring vectors.

"Are we going in the right direction at the right speed?" instead of "have we achieved a specific goal."

Developing humans in any arena is complex and trying to measure this using discrete goals is not only inneffective but can also be counter productive.

If we focus on a 'critical path' based on our ultimate destination and then track the progress of our journey using regular orientation stops to check on progress (a virtual 'sat nav' if you like!) we can ensure that we don't go too far away from our intended route and don't waste too much time.

But by allowing the flexibility to deviate from this path we can explore areas that we did not originally consider and benefit from adapting and assimilating what we learn.

There was a lot more than this in the presentation and the there is a second part that I haven't had time to get to yet but hopefully you got as much from this as I did.

All the best

This week I am doing a 'Vlog' (which is a Video Blog apparently!) because I am finding it hard to find the time to share my thoughts through writing.

I was part of the team that ran a 'Future Player' conference this weekend at Twickenham. We had some fascinating talks and workshops that really got the cogs whirring.

In this video I talk about the difference between an effective and an efficent talent development system and why an efficient system might not be what you want.

I also suggest how we might use science to assist in making our systems more effective AND more efficient which is the best of both worlds.

Enjoy...


Got Skills_edited.png

Some of you may know that I work as a Talent Academy Coach which is a great experience as I am have the privilege of working with some pretty awesome young people who are constantly surprising me with some of the things that they are able to do.

The Academy programme is breaking new ground because for the first time the u16 and u18 age groups are being coached together and also boys and girls are in the session working together as well. As you can imagine this makes for some interesting planning challenges

We allow the players to explore challenges and develop solutions to problems that we put in front of them. As coaches we work to manipulate things like space, player numbers and tasks to present the players with challenges and to see how they respond to them and learn to adapt.

So here is my quandary...

"What do we do when a player doesn't even have the fundamental skills required to be able to explore the solutions?"

The challenge we have is that there is quite an ability range so pitching the activity is quite difficult...too much of a stretch and they they are so internally focused on getting the basics right that they aren't really able to find solutions effectively...too easy and they begin to drift off and don't stay focused on working through the challenge.

I recently tweeted this great article by gymnastics coach Anne Josephson which outlined '35 secrets of brilliant coaches' which got a lot of interest and I thought I would share number 28 as I found it useful to help me with this quandary.

"28. Give plenty of time for new skills to develop. Brilliant coaches allow at least eight weeks for athletes to learn a new skill. As the athlete progresses in the sport that time frame will actually get longer, not shorter, as the skills are increasingly complex".

I think that this is a problem that many of us face in our coaching. We are too quick to move on. Whether it is in the interests of wanting to provide variety so players don't get bored or because we know that we have a lot to get through and need to move on we don't allow the required time for skills to become ingrained...and we are then frustrated when the players don't perform the skills effectively in the game.

Another great source that a looked to for answers is Doug Lemov's latest book " Practice Perfect" which is a gold mine of highly practical suggestions to assist with all aspects of coaching and practice design. The book is split up into a series of 42 'rules' and right at the start in rule number 2 is an idea that makes total sense to me. The authors refer to 'Practice the 20' where they suggest that we should focus in on the "20% that is going to provide 80% of the value".

So these are the conclusions I have come to...

  1. Don't be in too much of a rush. The players are ready to move on when they are ready to move on.

  2. Work with each athlete individually and help them to identify their 20% development area. I do a lot on 1 to 1s with players during breaks or at the start and end of the session to get them to focus in on thier personal development area. I can then reference this throughout the session with a nod or quick 'hot review' during the session.

  3. Be relentless in reaffirming these focus areas even though we might feel like we need to add variety and move on.

  4. Create opportunities for repetition of these skills without it becoming repetitive. Vary the activity while still working on the same skill or development area. You can tweak the same activity just a bit to challenge ina different way.

  5. Be clear on your own mind on what is the 'critical path' for the athlete or athletes and help them stay on that path.

If you have any other thoughts I would love to here them.

Happy Coaching

P.S. My mission is to try and share my experiences with as many coaches and parents as I can so if you found this mail useful at all then please help me to reach some more people by sharing this.

 
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