Who moved the apple juice?
“The people that adjust and adapt the quickest come out on top”
The story goes like this…
I was recently at my local M&S store getting some lunch. After selecting a sandwich from the shelves, I moved further down the aisle to grab my apple juice from its normal place…only to realise half way through reaching for the bottle that the apple juice bottles had been moved slightly to the left of their normal spot, and what I was reaching towards was in fact apple and mango juice (*cue melodramatic music*). Now I’m sure you’re on the edge of your seat waiting to learn my fate…well, I’m happy to say I was able to rescue the situation by adapting my reaching action and succeeded in grasping the apple juice bottle. Phew! Disaster avoided ;-)
Now what has all this got to do with anything related to our themes of helping people in sport be their best through ecological dynamics and complexity thinking? Quite a bit as it turns out..
The overarching theme is how complex adaptive systems (person, team, organisation) have the potential to quickly adapt to (unexpected) changes in their environment, as I did in changing my reach to grasp the apple juice. This is based on the premise that the system has been “designed” appropriately. For people the design is inherent in our makeup; teams, organisations and their execution - sometimes not so much.
In a dynamic environment perceptual attunement is key. It was my ability to perceive information in the environment that enabled me to adapt my actions effectively. My troubles began because I started to execute my reaching action based not on perceiving the current state of the environment, but from a plan devised from past visits to the juice aisle. I’ll come back to this.
Crucial in this “adaptive reach” was the ability of the component parts of my musculoskeletal system to quickly re-assemble into a coordination pattern that allowed me to successfully reach and grasp the apple juice. This is exploiting the power of “degeneracy” in a complex adaptive system…
“Degeneracy essentially concerns the capacity to make use of structurally different components to achieve the same functional outcomes. This property expresses the flexibility and adaptability to fit task constraints for performance goal-achievement.”
(Davids et al, 2014)
Degeneracy in perception-action systems
This organising principle (preserve functional outcome, implement it with whatever you’ve got) actually extends to the level of the perception-action system. Take a task like reach-to-grasp; you can implement the functional outcome of transporting your hand from where it is to the object via an indefinitely large set of movements.
(Wilson, 2011)
It has been suggested that to exploit the in-built capacity for degeneracy requires a (learning) process of search and exploration, and therefore the almost inevitable “failures” that come along with this are to be expected. This search for movement solutions tunes the system into its capabilities, accounts for intrinsic dynamics and arguably paves the way for adaptive movement (demonstrated by stability yet flexibility). It could also lead to the discovery of novel/creative solutions.
“One demonstration concerns the study of reaching. The week-by-week development of four babies was tracked over a 3-month period as they transitioned from not reaching to reaching. Each baby did learn, finding a solution that began with exploration of the movement space.”
(Thelen & Smith, 2006)
“….as in the case of Dick Fosbury, the elite high jumper, sometimes exploration of novel movement patterns can not just improve performance but actually push it to a new, higher level.”
(Davids et al, 2014)
Let’s now come back to the dangers of becoming a slave to “The Plan”.
Possibly the most obvious examples of pre-planned actions that become dysfunctional in a changing environment are the set patterns/plays executed by attackers in team sports. Often these are practiced by the attacking team without any defense present, and the execution is based purely on what the coach has diagrammed. This is seen in basketball when a pass from the guard at the top of the arc to a player on the wing - the pre-planned action that initiates the offense - is intercepted by a defender whose movement the guard failed to perceive. In this case the guard is executing an action based on a rigid plan, rather than perceiving the current environment and adapting his actions to suit. It may be that the defender overplaying the wing afforded a pass into the low post. This is akin to my example of beginning my reach for the apple juice based on a plan of where it usually was. In my example I perceived the apple juice was in fact in a different position and was able to adapt my actions appropriately, the equivalent of exploiting the opportunity to pass to the low post.
I also see this in football (soccer) where a wall-pass (“give & go”) is a common pattern involving two attacking players. Again this is often practiced without defenders, such that in a game the player playing the return pass does so without perceiving whether the receiver’s run has been covered by an opponent. The need to stay in perceptual contact with a changing environment, and become attuned to key information sources (positioning & movement of a defender relative to an attacker), is critical.
Unfortunately naive performance analysis processes are frequently exacerbating the problem. Recently I heard a professional team espouse that, due to their in-depth analysis of various match situations, they are able to instruct players to “play the probabilities, not the possibilities”, even when those odds are only 60/40. That means on 4/10 occasions they will make an ineffective action/play. This won’t cut it at international level. However it may seem appealing because a team can learn these pre-planned actions/plays relatively quickly and get to a 6/10 level which might be good enough at a lower standard of competition.
Interestingly, the exact opposite of this approach is recommended for achieving high performance in a complex adaptive system (such as a rugby/football/basketball match) with the “need to focus on possibilities rather than probabilities” (Johnston et al, 2014), adapting & acting on the most appealing possibilities (affordances) as they emerge from moment to moment on the pitch/court.
Not surprisingly, the coach of the world’s best team has a great experiential understanding of how to approach these complex matters…
“You need some sort of structure to be able to play but at the end of the day the opposition tell you how you can play,” he says. “It’s what I call ABC. You assume something through analysis. Believe nothing and go out and confirm it. So from the analysis you might say that this move might work, but it will only work if they continue defending the same way they have been. If you get out there and they have changed their defensive pattern, then the move is useless. So you need to have your players understanding why the move works and why it won’t work, so that they can adjust and adapt. It is no different from business. The people that adjust and adapt the quickest come out on top.”
- Steve Hansen, All Blacks
Problematically for some, adaptive skill must be nurtured over a lengthy period through exposure to well-designed* learning spaces. It demands perception, cognition & movement be blended. This space will foster learning through (guided) search, discovery, and “trial and error”. A sporting culture that cannot delay the gratification of winning and lure of professional contracts for its young players will likely struggle to create, and have players fully engage with, this learning space. If not addressed, such a sporting culture is destined for perpetual mediocrity.
* young players are capable of designing effective learning spaces if given the opportunity. We see this with street/park games.
References
- Davids, Keith, Hristovski, Robert, Araújo, Duarte, Balagué Serre, Natalia, Button, Chris, & Passos, Pedro (Eds.) (2014) Complex Systems in Sport. Routledge, London
- Johnston, Keith, Coughlin, Carolyn, and Garvey Berger, Jennifer (2014) Leading in Complexity — What makes complexity different and how can leaders respond effectively?
- Thelen, E. & Smith, L.B. (2006) Dynamic Systems Theories. In Handbook of Child Psychology, Volume 1, Theoretical Models of Human Development, 6th Edition, William Damon (Editor), Richard M. Lerner (Volume editor), pp 258–312.
- Wilson, Andrew (2011) There’s More Than One Way to Rhythmically Move a Lobster
