Leaders. Culture. Decisions.
Everybody says that nobody's bigger than the club, but teams don't always act like that.
Over-empowered leaders are unsupported leaders. Unsupported leaders burn out. The myth of burnout is that it is unsustainable high performance that you can get away with for a while. Actually it’s immediate low performance. Leaders get selfish, shrink their circles, and make subjective judgements.
Leaders are employees doing a job. They need to be supported and developed. Good organisations make this commitment.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Culture also eats a win bonus for breakfast.
Some cultures, people look out for each other. Other cultures, people look out for themselves. And some cultures, people are seeking to actually compete or harm or punish others. How do you ensure that you're in the right one of those three?
An organisation has got to feel like an in-group that people want to belong to. It's a very natural way of creating motivation. When people feel they share a history, purpose, language and set of values, they feel that they belong. Sometimes belonging happens organically. But all organisations need to be prepared to nudge or design cultural evolution.
A good decision is when people don’t point fingers at each other after it is made.
The holy grail of decision-making is still a human expert making a well-informed subjective judgement. Data systems need to deliver high resolution information with context and perspective. Then humans need to be willing and able to make decisions.
Clubs need to make selection decisions, when selecting players to squads or teams, and when selecting tactics for matches against different opponents. They need to make training decisions, when deciding more, less, same or different doses from their portfolio of interventions.
The ORCDA (adapted OODA) Loop designs Observation, Recognition, Contextualisation, Decision and Action into the decision-making process.