Group Captain Emma Keith took to the stage to outline the RAF’s ever-adapting approach to bringing trainee officers up to speed.
“A lot of people hold up self-awareness as the holy grail. ‘I’m really self-aware.’ Brilliant. But it’s a complete waste of your time if you do nothing with that knowledge,” she said.
“Just imagine that I’m the kind of boss that says: ‘When I’m under pressure I can get really stressed and yell’ – I don’t think I am but let’s say that I am – it doesn’t help my team at all that I have that knowledge. What helps them is that I do something about that, which is the hard part.”
Keith, a Royal Air Force Group Captain, is the Commandant of the Tedder Academy of Leadership at the RAF. In 2015 she became the first woman to run RAF Officer Training.
A decade later, she stepped onto the stage at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit to run through her organisation’s strategies for effective learning.
The Leaders Performance Institute picked five that stand out.
1. The RAF promotes self-leadership
For the RAF, learning is not just about “absorbing information”, as Keith put it, but in establishing the right habits that enable learning. Self-leadership is at the forefront of their approach. It combines that aforementioned self-awareness with self-management. It also feeds into the idea that everyone in the RAF is a leader in their own right.
“Leadership at all levels really matters,” said Keith, who believes it would be all too easy for personnel in non-command positions to absolve themselves of responsibility. “I really don’t like the term ‘follower’. It needs a word in front of it; an engaged follower, a respected or intelligent follower. Nobody just follows, or at least they shouldn’t, and I don’t want someone in my organisation who isn’t a thinking follower. What we’re really talking about is a leader who’s leading themselves with followership skills.”
Character is critical too. “You can teach skills more easily than you can teach character,” said Keith, who is less interested in what a person has done than how they have approached their opportunities.
“For example, if somebody has an amazing profile but they were dropped off at every fixture at school; they were picked up and everything was handed to them, it’s not to take it away from them but I want to see more from that person. But the kid who got on a bus and travelled 40 minutes under their own steam to make hockey practice – that shows me something about their character.”
Emma Keith in conversation with Alex Stacey at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at the Kia Oval in London.
2. The service positions its values as the ‘carrot’ rather than the ‘stick’
The RAF has a document entitled ‘Air Publication One’. “It’s not a very sexy name, I’m afraid,” said Keith. “Welcome to the military.”
Prosaic title aside, it sets out the RAF’s values of ‘respect’, ‘integrity’, ‘service’ and ‘excellence’. There’s nothing unique in those four – you probably have something similar within your teams – but the devil is in the detail.
Air Publication One is updated from time to time, with the last occasion being in 2019.
“Those updates covered more inclusive imagery and language,” Keith continued. “Thinking about my organisation, that’s probably not that surprising. But another major change that I made to that document, which came from my experience of running officer training, was to shift this from being the stick to the carrot.”
This shift was critical because too often the document was used to browbeat good people. “Actually 99% of my organisation are amazing, they really are, and I wanted a document that was aspirational for them, that they could believe in, that it was the organisation they wanted to be a part of. And we know from all the different behavioural models of change that it only happens when people want to change, not because it’s been forced on them.”
Everyone in the service is asked what these values mean to them. “Even the word ‘discipline’ means something different to me and a 17-year-old who’s just joined up. So, if they feel that they’ve been heard and listened and talked to, I think that’s really important.”
Air Publication One is currently undergoing further revision.
3. They use peer to peer storytelling
As Keith explained, she and her team produced an anthology and a series of videos detailing the stories of RAF personnel. These are not just nice-to-haves but critical learning resources.
She illustrated her point by referring to the ineffectiveness of a top-down approach with a recruit. “With the best will in the world, if I stand up there and tell them all the things they should do, they’re going to look at me and go, ‘thanks very much, Group Captain, you do not live my world, you do not know me and I’m going to switch off. Your lived reality is different to mine’.”
Instead, “if their corporal stands up and says it, someone who’s only a couple years ahead of them, that really is powerful. Who in your organisation can you help sell that message for you?”
4. They accept that learning never ends
The RAF used to approach leadership development for its aspiring officers as something to be taught in one hit. Today, the service adheres to a four-step pathway:
“We’re changing ‘lead teams’ to ‘lead others’ because not everybody has a team, but you lead by role model and example,” said Keith, who also highlighted the pathway’s non-linear nature. “The reality is you will be doing all of these things all of the time. The Chief of the Air Staff is still leading himself. You never stop that.”
She also encourages challenge from younger generations. “It’s about having humility on both sides to have those conversations. That’s where things like mentoring and reverse mentoring can be so powerful. It’s an exchange of ideas that can be so helpful. I mentor a lot of people and, honestly, every time I put the phone down or put the coffee cup down, I’ve learned as much as they have, if not more, I am absolutely sure.”
5. They leave the ‘how’ to their learners
Nestled at the heart of the RAF’s guiding principles is ‘mission command’, which refers to the empowerment of mission leaders.
“In simple terms this is the idea that the leader or whoever’s in charge of the task is set the ‘what’ and the ‘why’, but we really try and keep out of the ‘how’,” said Keith. “What you’re trying to give is as much freedom of manoeuvre for people on the ‘how’ as you can.”
If she needs a team to cross a river to rendezvous with someone on the other side, for example, she will let them decide the ‘how’ so that they are not reliant on returning to her for instruction should things go wrong.
“It allows a speed of decision-making, empowerment for that person. It operates on trust and it crucially frees up headspace for the person in charge. Another wonderful gift you get from that technique is innovation and creativity, because they will probably do things differently to you, which is potentially uncomfortable for you, but also probably helpful.”
More on effective learning strategies
SBJ Tech takes us inside the league’s Situation Room in Toronto, where data can be used to more intricately analyze the sport of hockey.
Main Photo: NHL
“Goal, Boston.”
These pronouncements from video technicians were, for a time, the only interruptions piercing the quiet murmur of the NHL’s Situation Room, the league’s high-tech Toronto facility where every replay challenge is reviewed and ruled on.
Most goals are straightforward, but every one is reviewed by a hockey operations executive to ensure its legality. So long as the puck wasn’t kicked or high-sticked into the net, the game continues. But the technicians, each assigned a single game, watch several angles of each goal to prepare for a possible coach’s challenge — such as whether the offensive team was offside.
“Goal, Pittsburgh. This one’s on us.”
Suddenly, the room stirs to life. The Penguins appeared to net a game-winning goal against the Flyers in overtime, and the Situation Room initiates all challenges in the final minute of regulation or in OT. As the braintrust began reviewing the play — several hockey operations executives and a retired referee — word arrived that the on-ice refs whistled an infraction that nullified the goal.
A few minutes later, the Flyers scored their own apparent game winner, but very quickly, a potentially incriminating view of their entrance into the zone appeared on the screen.
The Situation Room features 16 LED flat screens along the front wall and roughly a dozen workspaces for technicians, each assigned to one game. Photo: NHL
“We’re going to challenge this. Let’s get the linesmen on.”
Word is communicated to the on-ice officials, one of whom informs the crowd that “the previous play is under review by the league to see if the play was offsides prior to the goal” as boos cascade down from Flyers fans.
Situation Room staff pored over several angles, most notably a Sony 4K camera installed right on the blue line for exactly this use. And the final verdict, made by the Situation Room, was close, but clear: Offside. No goal. About 80 seconds after the review began, the ref shared the news in Philadelphia. Even more boos followed.
“We are the keepers of the game,” said Kris King, NHL Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations, the department’s No. 2-ranking official under Colin Campbell.
This is the second year of an upgraded, high-tech Situation Room. There are 16 LED flat screens adorning the front wall, a desk in the middle of the room for executives and roughly a dozen workspaces around the perimeter, where technicians monitor every game. SBJ was one of two news outlets granted behind-the-scenes access on the first night the 10th-floor space was open to media.
“Our job doesn’t really change a lot, but the equipment that we use, and the knowledge that we gain from using better equipment, just gives us a little bit of an upper edge to get to the right answer quicker,” King added.
The NHL was the first professional sports league to centralize its reviews back in 1991, and it has worked with Sony-owned Hawk-Eye’s Synchronized Multi-Angle Replay Technology (SMART) as its video replay provider since 2015.
Separately, the league named Sony a global technology partner earlier this year, and Hawk-Eye’s tracking cameras were installed in every NHL arena prior to last season. That system offers potentially richer data: Whereas NHL Edge, which is powered by SMT sensors on the players and in the puck, tracks a single, center-of-mass location for each player, Hawk-Eye collects data from 29 points on each skater and six points from the hockey stick.
In time, that optical data from Hawk-Eye should inform a richer future of hockey analytics, more immersive fan engagement and, perhaps, data-driven support for officials.
“The NHL are very much innovators in the space — they want to innovate with us to create the future of technology in sport — but I love the fact that it is coupled with patience,” said Dan Cash, Sony Hawk-Eye’s Managing Director for North America. “They know that this is going to be powerful for their game, but they aren’t trying to sprint to the finish line here, which I think with technology can be sometimes a mistake.”
Cameras display a multitude of angles to enable the Situation Room crew to make speedy reviews. Photo: Joe Lemire
When King joined the league office in the early 2000s, the process was dramatically different. When a discipline issue arose, King would need to ferry a VHS tape to Campbell, who lived in Tillsonburg, a two-hour drive from the NHL office in Toronto.
They’d each get in their cars and drive halfway, inevitably connecting at a Tim Horton’s, the most Canadian of meeting points. Campbell would then drive home, review the tape and make a ruling about a possible suspension or fine. Nowadays, that video is transmitted in about 125 milliseconds from arenas to the Situation Room and about as rapidly to Campbell’s house, saving immense time and gas, at only the cost of a fresh coffee.
“How we transport video is the secret sauce, so to speak,” Cash said. “It’s not easy to transport video as quick as we do over a wide area network.”
We are the keepers of the game.
Kris King, NHL Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations
It’s even less for the league’s next-door neighbors. The goal horn from next-door Scotiabank Arena blared concurrently with a Maple Leafs goal scored on the Situation Room monitor. (The horn also later sounded for a Blue Jays home run; the World Series, featuring the local team, was discreetly on a few Situation Room screens.) That immediacy lets the Situation Room prepare video clips and look at questionable calls before even hearing from the on-site staff.
“It definitely is a real-time league now,” said Rod Pasma, NHL Group Vice President of Hockey Operations. “A lot of times we’ll know exactly what’s going on before [the coaches] even call the officials over to challenge a play.”
On that night, the Situation Room scoured replays to prepare a ruling that never materialized, with the on-site coach opting against the review process. “That’s a good non-challenge,” King said, noting the likelihood the call wouldn’t have been reversed.
The NHL continues to add cameras: There are three in each goal, one above, four on the blue lines and an elevated 4K lens to provide the All-12 viewpoint of every skater. Some arenas now have Cosm C360 cameras. The league will soon begin testing an 8K version of the All-12 at the Prudential Center — where the NHL and Verizon also are creating an innovation lab to test new tech, scheduled for full operation early in the new year.
On this particular night in the Toronto Situation Room, as part of ESPN’s Frozen Frenzy, all 32 teams were playing, many of the start times staggered by 15-minute intervals to make the action nonstop. One workstation was solely dedicated to pressing go on a digital dasherboards celebration for Alex Ovechkin’s 900th goal. The NHL didn’t want to chance it flashing live on-air, only for the goal to be overturned on review.
“The technology’s gotten to a point where the only thing we can’t do right now is literally hit the horn in the building,” Pasma said.
Hawk-Eye’s tracking cameras were installed in every NHL arena prior to last season. Photo: Joe Lemire
High in the rafters above Scotiabank Arena, looking down on the Maple Leafs’ 1960s Stanley Cup banners, are six black, rectangular cameras affixed to the catwalk and helping power the Hawk-Eye tracking system. From up here in the rafters, the ice seems impossibly low, but the 4K, 60-frames-per-second cameras capture granular movement data via images streamed directly to the cloud — Hawk-Eye’s first leaguewide deal to be cloud-native. Another six cameras are placed on lower levels of the arena to avoid obstruction from the center-hung video board.
Those dozen video inputs are triangulated and processed to determine the precise location of every skater and his stick. Hawk-Eye has provided MLB with bat tracking data for a couple seasons, but that’s only one bat in a known location every time — far different than 12 sticks across a 200-foot-by-85-foot ice rink.
For now, the AI models interpreting this data are still going through iterations to reach the confidence threshold for accuracy needed for wider distribution. The NHL has never had stick data, and Hawk-Eye and the league are in the “true development phase in refining the technology,” said Sean Williams, NHL Vice President, Innovation and Technology Partnerships. Williams added that it could soon be used to enhance the existing Edge tracking that teams can access through the data feed.
When Hawk-Eye data does become a part of the NHL Edge repository, it will not only further enrich the data-driven storytelling for fans via broadcast and digital media and help clubs more intricately analyze the sport, it also could provide other inputs for referees, linesmen and Situation Room executives.
“Not currently, but that’s definitely where we’re going,” said Sean Ellis, NHL Vice President of Hockey Operations, of using tracking data for officiating. “We’re not going to roll it out until we’re 100% confident and comfortable that the data that we’re getting is accurate.”
Even then, the potential is more to inform than automate. “We are genuinely looking at all options,” Williams said, “but our fundamental strategy is to keep the call on the ice made by humans.”
This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.
In the third and final session of his virtual roundtable series, Professor Fabio Serpiello of Central Queensland University raised the question of decision-making frameworks when choosing or discarding tech solutions.
Fabio Serpiello, the Director of Sport Strategy at Central Queensland University, first posed this question to Leaders Performance Institute members as part of the survey that resulted in our Trend Report.
Fewer than half of respondents said ‘yes’, with more than a third saying ‘no’. Curiously, nearly 20 percent said ‘I don’t know’.
“That’s a good chunk,” Serpiello told members of that 20 percent figure while leading a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable. “It is probably more interesting than the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ given that most of the people that responded are at the ‘head of’, ‘director of’ or ‘vice president of’ level.”
Yet in the same survey, almost 90 percent of respondents believed that a framework was at least ‘somewhat important’:
Logically, it seems likely that a good proportion of those respondents face frustrations in their work.
This likelihood set the stage for the third and final instalment of Serpiello’s roundtable series looking at tech-related innovation in sport.
First, the table noted some common problems around making decisions on tech.
A lack of decision-making frameworks: the magnitude of the challenge will depend on to whom you speak. Some markets are more mature than others; some sports resist tech-related innovation. As Serpiello said: “We are experiencing a lot of difference in the maturity of the European context and the Australian context versus the American context in some of these discussions, naturally, because of the way sport works.”
Overzealous vendors: almost every practitioner has heard a misfiring pitch from tech vendors at some point; they’re even more likely to have seen purported tech solutions gathering dust in a cupboard at their practice facility. A senior sports scientist illustrated the reality in his role:
“It’s not always us identifying a gap and reaching out to the best fit to fill that gap. It’s a lot of companies reaching out to us and trying to be ahead of the curve sometimes, which is maybe filling a need that you don’t have.”
Pressure from leadership: in some cases, senior leaders are pushing their high performance teams into finding the latest gadget. The aforementioned sports scientist also feels pressure from above:
“We’re being pushed from the top, even if you don’t know if the suggested tech solution makes sense. They’ll say: ‘just get some fancy toy that people will talk about’.”
The table also pointed to several solutions.
Serpiello spoke of the Sports Tech Research Network, specifically its Quality Framework for Sports Technologies, as a time-saver.
This white paper introduces a standardised, evidence-based framework which can be adopted by sports technology stakeholders to assess the value, usability and quality of technology.
Developed in collaboration with 48 experts across the sports industry by means of a Delphi study design, the framework includes a range of qualities grouped under five overarching pillars:
“Some of these pillars lead to more hardcore science questions; accuracy, repeatability, reproducibility, construct validity, or predictive validity; those are very much science-driven,” said Serpiello. “Some of them are more operational such as compliance, data privacy or environmental sustainability; and some are more user experience; how does the customer support and training work? These things are very important for you in sport because they make or break the day-to-day choices and the day-to-day use of technology.”
He then illustrated how the framework might be used to make informed choices:
One or two members had already used and adapted the framework to their team, as one sports scientist explained:
“We’ve adopted it when we’re looking at multiple systems for velocity-based training or GPS, just to give our practitioners and stakeholders guidance and have that scoring system to then see how it ends up; and to put in some objectivity to the potential subjectivity of that process. I think it’s helped us a lot because different stakeholders in different departments can come together. We actually added to it as well for things like partnerships and sponsorships and adapted it to our setting, which made it even more useful.”
Governing body mandates
As Serpiello explained, international confederations such as FIFA and FIBA, as well as national governing bodies, such as the Dutch Olympic Committee*Dutch Sports Federation, mandate the format in which data must be produced by companies.
In a similar vein, the AFL has an “internal technology group” for vetting all potential tech solutions. Serpiello said: “It includes coaches, medical, sports science, S&C, commercial, legal personnel and they say ‘we meet once a month and we deal with the approaches this way’. So outside that process, they do not respond to you, they do not engage with you, they say to you as a company ‘this is the process, submit your inquiry, and then we’ll assess it’. I like it because it takes away a lot of that constant having to deal with companies that come and say ‘we’ve got this amazing product’ only for you to then realise that it’s really the same product as before.”
Another example is the NBA Launchpad, which is the league’s initiative to source, evaluate and pilot emerging technologies.
“It’s basically ‘come and show us what you have and we’ll look at it’,” said Serpiello. “That’s slightly different from ‘okay, we’ve got an issue and we’re going to throw it out there’.”
Accuracy and reliability are less important than practicality
Accuracy and reliability are important but they are not everything.
“I’ve slightly changed my mind on this over the years,” said Serpiello. “I’ve seen organisations chasing the product that was one percent more accurate or reliable on some of the main variables, only to then completely disregard the other part, which was does it have API [application programming interface] connections with my other systems? Does it allow me to make quick decisions every morning when the athlete rocks up? Those things are far more valuable than being able to say confidently that high-speed running this week was 1K or 1.1K.”
A programme manager in the Australian system concurred while highlighting the tension between providing broadcast data (where granularity and accuracy are not as important as they might be for a high performance team).
He said:
“I think that’s the healthy tension between something that is returning value, whether it be in the speed of decision making or feedback from experimentation; that’s the inherent tension of scientifically valid and reliable systems versus commercially valuable systems… and just because something’s not valid and reliable doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. You just need a measurement to be able to reduce that accuracy and reliability to a standard that you’re comfortable with.”
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NewtForce’s streamlined analysis tool enables real-time pitching feedback thanks to its collaboration with motion capture specialists Movrs.
Main Photo: Movrs
The Bulldogs began using the new high-tech pitching tunnels while construction workers were still clearing the space. Photo courtesy of NewtForce.
This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.
In a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable, DCU’s Jamie Taylor led a discussion on the elements that hold back coach development practices.
That is according to Jamie Taylor, who described the state of play.
He said: “It’s unclear how we help coaches to get better and it’s even less clear what methods of coach development are appropriate.”
Then, he added, “it’s very difficult to be able to evaluate and review coach learning.”
Taylor, an Assistant Professor in Elite Performance at Dublin City University [DCU], had set the stage for his virtual roundtable presentation, which explored all facets of the coach development challenge that faces organisations across the world of sport.
Competent or expert?
Taylor, using the graphic below, outlined the tasks (on the left-hand side) that a coach developer needs to be able to fulfil in their role and the questions that each task provokes (on the right): 
Too often, organisations do not adequately answer these questions.
The Premier League, for one, were struggling when they turned to Taylor and DCU three years ago.
“At the time, the Premier League thought they had a competent academy coaching workforce, but they weren’t happy with just ‘good enough’,” he said.
Together, they worked to identify the qualities of coaches deemed ‘expert’ as part of their Coaching Expertise Project. They co-developed a coach profiling tool to help academy coaches on that pathway from competence to expertise.
“The tool itself is around a half a day’s worth of different simulations that the coach can go through. It presents them with various difficult scenarios,” Taylor continued. “At the end, it generates a profile that says, ‘here’s where a coach might be strong, here’s where a coach might be weaker’.”
The project has yielded demonstrable outcomes. “Coach developers are reporting that it’s much easier to understand what a coach needs and be able to direct them and say, ‘here’s the time we’ve got and this is how we might use this time to influence and enhance your practice’.”
There are, however, still unknowns. “When evaluating and reviewing coach learning and development, we are still unsure what ‘better’ is.”
The project continues and coaches are tracked in their progress.
The ‘messy’ middle
Good coach development work combines both more direct and less direct approaches.
Taylor believes a thorough approach would look something like this:
In reality, however, coach development too often veers towards less direct approaches.
“Similar to what we see in coaching, there has been a view that it’s inappropriate to offer more direct pedagogical approaches,” Taylor continued. He believes this is a consequence of sport being influenced by executive coaching practices and adult learning theory. Yet coaching is not C-suite work.
Supported reflection and communities of practice can be useful, but there are limitations. “If the coach hasn’t got the knowledge to reflect, or the coach developer doesn’t have a strong pedagogical capacity, then it can end up being just a nice coffee and a nice chat.”
Between the more direct and less direct approaches illustrated above is what Taylor calls “the messy middle”.
“We haven’t often seen approaches like cognitive apprenticeship, where somebody’s needs are identified, understood, and they’re given tasks that are just beyond their current ability. We haven’t got into directed reading and listening, mostly because lots of the available resources aren’t necessarily coaching-focused. Nor have we paid lots of attention to the ability to generate feedback rather than offer more supported reflection.”
‘The things we might do to generate competence don’t always promote expertise’
As the Premier League and DCU observed, the things that coach developers can do to generate competence do not always lead to expertise.
The notion of ‘best practice’ is a prime example.
“When we say ‘best practice’, I think we’re essentially saying ‘if we do it like this most of the time, it will be better rather than worse’,” said Taylor. “This tends to be more observable. I can see somebody doing ‘this’ and what I’m going to do is encourage somebody to repeat this ‘best practice’. This can be done through auditing processes; it can be done through more directive approaches; and it is significantly easier to leverage and promote than expertise.
“Now, expertise could be associated with good practice, but ultimately that means understanding intentions and context, and it requires us to probe and promote adaptability for coaches; for them to be able to respond to changing contexts. And I see these two things in tension with each other. Lots of the things that we might do to generate competence often don’t promote expertise.”
Taylor then illustrated this point of difference:
The middle domain – skill acquisition – came to the fore in Taylor’s work last year when the Dublin Gaelic Athletic Association enlisted his support in a coach development capacity.
At the start of his secondment he leant towards expertise, but when three coaches announced their intention to move on at the end of the season he pivoted towards supporting them in skill acquisition for athletes, specifically the planning of sessions and whether performance metrics were being met.
All three elements are key to coach development work, both “systemically and individually”.
Taylor’s hope is that “over the long term, we’re going to start progressing towards a broader and wider reach for coach development practice.”
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How Do you Develop the Most Expert Coaching Workforce in World Football?
In the second part of his virtual roundtable series looking at tech-supported innovation in sport, CQU’s Professor Fabio Serpiello turns the light on the widespread lack of structured decision-making processes in sport.
The Director of Sport Strategy at Central Queensland University led the second instalment of a three-part Leaders Virtual Roundtable series aimed at exploring the dynamics of tech-supported innovation in sport.
As host, Serpiello wanted to “provide frameworks and stimulate discussion on how to select the right technology for performance challenges, ensuring decisions align with strategy and context.”
The Leaders Trend Report earlier this year highlighted that fewer than half of practitioners can point to a structured decision-making process within their organisation. Many have lamented this with Serpiello, which stands to reason as nearly all respondents in the report perceive such a structure as important.
It starts with a clear performance question, as a sports scientist working in European football put it.
She said: “If we’re going to make a decision, we have to have something well-structured. We need to ask what do we want from what we’re collecting or what do we want from what we’re asking the athletes to do.”
Another attendee, with oversight of several sports, recalled their own situation with problem clarification. “The solution looked like the key, but many sports were unclear on the problem.”
Serpiello presented the group with two models to address this issue.
Greg Satell’s Model of Innovation
Innovation, Serpiello argues, comes in several shapes and forms depending on the nature of the problem. To make his point, he introduced renowned change management specialist Greg Satell’s Model of Innovation, which provides a practical framework for introducing innovative practices, encourages strategic thinking about problems and helps to facilitate better collaboration.
He presented a diagram of Satell’s model to the table:
Serpiello had previously shared his thoughts on each quadrant:
Basic research – a low understanding of both domain and problem: “We don’t really know what the problem is and we don’t really know in which field or area it happens.”
Disruptive innovation – a well-understood domain but poorly understood problem: “In this area you may need something like innovation labs or launch pads.”
Breakthrough innovation – a poorly understood domain but well-defined problem: “This is the reverse of disruptive innovation… the classic example of open innovation.”
Sustaining innovation – a well-understood domain and problem: “The most common form in sport [and often the subject of] continuous research, design thinking or road mapping.”
A fuller account can be found here.
A general manager of a successful Paralympic programme gave an example of breakthrough innovation in their work supporting totally blind swimmers:
“We’re working with our institute partners and also reaching out to universities to understand if there’s interest in terms of product development and research in this space.”
There is a clear problem, the domain is less defined, and the organisation is piloting new concepts.
Another attendee working in the Olympic and Paralympic system spoke of an example of disruptive innovation when their team sought coaching tools, primarily:
“The piloting was done with the university [engineering department]… the final year project has to be sponsored, innovative, and they’re graded on the finish of the product and customer satisfaction… they were constantly in touch with us, so in terms of getting clear on the problem and implementing a solution, they were fantastic, these young engineers… The projects that succeeded were embedded into sport, and it was because the engineer was back and forth with the client, with us, and with the athletes.”
The Cynefin Framework
Serpiello then reacquainted the table with the Cynefin Framework.
‘Cynefin’, which is pronounced ‘ku-nev-in’, is a Welsh word that signifies ‘the multiple factors in our environment and our experience that influence us in ways we can never understand,’ as Snowden and Boon wrote in their 2007 Harvard Business Review essay titled ‘A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making’.
The Cynefin Framework, they continued, ‘helps leaders determine the prevailing operative context so they can make appropriate choices’.
Source: HBR
The framework classifies decision-making contexts into five domains:
“The Cynefin Framework essentially classifies decision-making on the continuum between order and unordered conditions,” said Serpiello, adding, “because if you make the wrong decision, or if you use the wrong quadrant, you may waste a lot of time without actually getting to the right answer.”
He cited the example of tracking tech companies selling their wares as the answer to complicated and complex problems. “What tracking technology should do really well, in my opinion, is give you the ability to quickly categorise what’s happening in training and then respond properly, whether it is a load management, readiness or a recovery response.”
Other ideas
What to read next
In a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable, Simon Eastwood of Management Futures presented a series of models and tips for leaders in sport.
As Eastwood, the Head of Leadership Skills at Management Futures, explained, the wrong word, tone, timing or even body language from a coach can trigger a negative reaction when giving an athlete feedback.
Every Leaders Performance Institute member attending this virtual roundtable has been there; and Eastwood, as host of the session, began by posing this question:
When giving feedback, what do you notice that people say or do, or that perhaps you might have said or done, that can trigger a negative response?
Members at the table raised some familiar themes, including:
Switching tack, Eastwood posed a second question:
What types of feedback help people to improve both quickly and positively?
The table suggested feedback that is:
To help the members at the table strike that balance, Eastwood introduced them to the SCARF model.
The SCARF model
This framework, devised by neuroscientist David Rock, explains five domains that influence human social behaviour and motivation. SCARF stands for:
“It’s a great tool for stepping back and assessing your team and thinking about what really makes them tick,” said Eastwood. “Crucially, it’s not about avoiding that feedback.”
He suggested that leaders should reward these needs through feedback, so people feel valued and motivated rather than threatened and, to illustrate his point, presented a table that set out what ‘threat’ and ‘reward’ may look like in each domain:
Eastwood then pivoted to his next question:
When giving positive feedback, which elements do you find most need to be reinforced?
The table responded across each domain:
Status
Certainty
Autonomy
Relatedness
Fairness
The Feedforward model
Eastwood then moved the conversation on to what leaders can do to help individuals improve future performance rather than dwell on past mistakes.
To that end, he introduced the table to executive coach Marshall Goldsmith’s Feedforward model.
While Eastwood admitted the term “can feel a little bit contrived as a title”, he feels it enables productive feedback conversations by placing the emphasis on the future:
As Eastwood explained, conversations that feedforward:
Eastwood: “It doesn’t mean that you don’t address something that needs to be changed or improved, but it just means that rather than focus on what’s not gone well, you focus on what could go well next time.”
On the SCARF model: this means reduced risk of triggering status or fairness threats by avoiding blame.
Eastwood: “Instead of spending time looking back, the idea here is: how could you hold your position next time and still maintain the athlete-coach relationship?”
On the SCARF model: this supports athlete autonomy by inviting them to co-design solutions.
Eastwood: “It feels less threatening because it offers a range of possibilities. So you’re not really addressing what they’re not doing well, it’s just what they could do in the future.”
On the SCARF model: this reduces certainty and status threats by framing feedback as future-focused and constructive.
Eastwood: “They’re possibly looking out for more and asking ‘how I can be even better?’”
On the SCARF model: this taps into status and relatedness as motivating forces.
Eastwood: “It comes across more of a coaching opportunity, and it has to develop focus, which shows care rather than telling off.”
On the SCARF model: it places an emphasis on relatedness and fairness.
Eastwood then posed a final question to the table:
The next time you give feedback, what will you do better?
Attendees provided a range of responses:
“I think I will ask my team to think about the way they would like to receive feedback as individuals.”
“Improve the speed at which we provide feedback. Do it more regularly and get to it quicker.”
“I want to encourage to speak to our coaches to think about these two models because they struggle to give good feedback to our young athletes.”
“I want to hold group feedback sessions where you present something you want to get feedback on.”
“With the athlete’s input, we can create a more individualised starting point that makes sense to them.”
To wrap things up, Eastwood suggested that attendees start making changes within seven days. He said: “They’re easy to have as a theory and they stay a theory until you actually actively use them.”
The organisation has incorporated technology from NeckCare, a wearable head device that measures neck function through sensorimotor exercises and provides insights into the into the return-to-play concussion protocols of athletes at its UFC Performance Institute locations.
Main Photo: Getty Images
Heather Linden, UFC’s Director/Sports Medicine, told SBJ that over the past two years, UFC has collected data from 300-400 athletes, which will be used to establish baseline data on its athlete population’s neck function and inform future assessments.
The impetus behind the collaboration for UFC was to add more objectivity into its head injury assessments.
“It’s very easy to prescribe a knee rehab with — the range of motion is lacking, their peak torque-to-bodyweight [ratio] is this, their isokinetic strength testing is this. It’s really easy to say, ‘You’re not ready to return to sport,’” Linden said. “But in the concussion realm, a lot of times you can’t see the symptoms … By having NeckCare and having that objectivity and showing [athletes], ‘Hey, cognitively you’re performing like this normally and you’re not here’ — that now gives that competitive edge to [athlete] buy-in.”
UFC utilizes two NeckCare devices in the physical therapy clinics of each of its Performance Institute locations in Las Vegas, Mexico City and Shanghai. It uses NeckCare’s range of motion and neck position exercises as a part of its head injury evaluation process, and also for recovery/training purposes, Linden added.
NeckCare CEO Orri Gudmundsson said the primary focus for the company, which went to market about two years ago, is to sell into health clinics, but it also works with multiple NCAA football programs and Twin Cities Orthopedics, which treats NFL and NHL athletes, in addition to UFC.
“If you suffer a concussion, the neck is always involved,” Gudmundsson said. “Cervicogenic [originating from the neck but felt in the head] headaches, cervicogenic dizziness — that’s where we come in with technology that’s been in research and development for more than 20 years, to quantify the function of the neck and how your eyes, your brain and your neck are talking together.”
NeckCare’s devices, which are FDA-listed, price at $6,000 per year. The company overall works with more than 250 providers across North America.
This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.
The former US tennis star made the unconventional move of moving into venture capitalism.
Main Photo: Getty Images
At age 15, she was the No. 1 junior tennis player in the world. By four months after her 18th birthday, she’d climbed as high as 35 in the WTA rankings and reached two (of an eventual three) Grand Slam singles third rounds.
But after injuries forced her to retire in 2021, Bellis is now showing similar precociousness in a new endeavor — venture capital.
In mid-2023, Bellis launched an eponymous sports technology investment firm called Cartan Capital (her full name is Catherine Cartan). It has raised two funds — the first a $10 million pledge fund sourced from 15 investors, the second a larger fund that is nearly closed and deploying capital — and made eight investments.
“I grew up in Silicon Valley, so I felt like I was around venture from a young age,” said Bellis, 26, and an Atherton, California, native. “I grew up solely focused on tennis. … But school was always a big part of my life and something that my parents instilled in me — how important education is — from a young age. … I knew that I wanted to always have a backup plan.”
Catherine Bellis took the first set from Victoria Azarenka at Wimbledon in 2017. (Photo by Lindsey Parnaby/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Bellis initially committed to Stanford, her dream school, but after cracking the WTA top 100 as a teenager, decided to go all-in on tennis. While playing, she pursued an undergraduate degree in business administration from Indiana University through a scholarship program facilitated by the WTA — eventually giving the commencement address for her graduating class in 2022 — then got her MBA at the University of Miami.
Her first professional break came through an internship with Orlando-based Tavistock Development Co., which she parlayed into another internship — and eventual promotion to investment analyst — with leAD Sports & Health Tech Partners.
Longtime venture investor Martin Mann, now a Cartan Capital partner and the largest backer of the firm’s first fund, met Bellis through his work on the board of the USTA Foundation, but remembers being “over-the-top impressed” by her straight-shooting answers to due diligence questions after she brought him in to meet with leAD during her time there.
“When she left to start Cartan, she called me and asked me if I would be an adviser. I thought it was a little shocking that she was jumping off after only a few years in venture capital,” Mann said. “But there are some people — and they are few and far between that I’ve seen — that are just more extraordinary than humans should be.”
Cartan Capital focuses primarily on participating in Series A or later-stage seed rounds, led by other firms, across sports, technology, health and wellness. Its portfolio consists of several startups that have made waves through partnerships with major leagues and media properties, including audio innovation company Edge Sound Research, AI-powered musculature analysis platform Springbok Analytics, interactive hologram maker Proto Hologram and TGL creator TMRW Sports.
Bellis’ reputation with her portfolio companies is that of an attentive, hands-on and well-sourced partner adept at facilitating connections — whether in business development or hiring — and providing an athlete’s perspective.
“She has a determination to support all their portfolio companies,” said Edge Sound Research CEO Valtteri Salomaki. “That’s rare with a smaller fund like hers, because usually — I mean, X amount of resources, X amount of time. … For her to not only source and understand companies, but then also from there be able to support those companies, her personality is clearly [that] she cares.”
CiCi Bellis, center, attends the Break The Love and Tory Sport private celebration in honor of Women’s History Month and The Miami Open in March 2022. Also pictured (L-r): Trisha Goyal, Marissa E. Hill, Taylor Townsend, Jessica Pegula, Christina McHale and Bethanie Mattek-Sands. (Photo by Desiree Navarro/Getty Images)
Bellis also began a two-year term as a director-at-large (elite athlete) on the USTA’s board this year, where, as has become custom, she is the youngest in the room. She has distinguished herself there by serving on several committees, including the USTA Investment Committee, USTA Ventures Committee and two athlete committees.
Bill McGugin, USTA Ventures chairman and fellow board member, said Bellis has made a particular impact in deal sourcing and analysis for the organization’s venture arm, which has made three investments since launching two years ago.
“Though she’s relatively young, you feel like you’re talking to someone that’s been in the profession for 20 years,” McGugin said of Bellis. “Her awareness of the market, her awareness of financial structuring, her connections to other investment firms and opportunities. … [Working with her has] been very positive.”
Bellis said the discipline she developed as an athlete has aided her transition to her next phase.
“My work ethic and dedication that I brought from my day-in, day-out tennis career and all the hours that it takes to be a pro athlete — I was able to catch on really quickly based on the work that I did outside of work, making sure I was up to speed on everything going on and learning about venture,” she said. “Just being scrappy.”
This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.
