{"id":31786,"date":"2025-12-02T09:52:45","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T09:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=31786"},"modified":"2026-01-27T11:45:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T11:45:11","slug":"in-complex-environments-robust-processes-and-a-learning-culture-are-essential","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/in-complex-environments-robust-processes-and-a-learning-culture-are-essential\/","title":{"rendered":"In Complex Environments, Robust Processes and a Learning Culture Are Essential"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 2 Dec 2025 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

In Complex Environments, Robust Processes and a Learning Culture Are Essential<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Everton\u2019s Head of Sport Science Jack Nayler concludes his exploration of complexity in sport by outlining what it takes to be resilient and adaptable under pressure.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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By Jack Nayler<\/h6>\n
During the course of this series we have explored the hallmarks<\/a> that define complex environments.<\/h6>\n

We also looked further at the implications<\/a>\u00a0for this in a sporting organisation, notably that complexity is fractal, exists at different levels, and that each person within the organisation will exert different levels of influence over the performance at any given moment.<\/p>\n

Last week, I began to look at what this means<\/a> for those in leadership positions.<\/p>\n

Leadership in complexity requires you to have the humility to accept the ignorance of your position and the understanding that autocracy won\u2019t work. It is impossible to micro-manage every decision in the fast pace and short turnaround of games in a professional sports season. You will not be present to control every interaction that occurs and you will not possess all of the information available to make every decision.<\/p>\n

With the inherent fluctuations that occur in a complex environment, it is incumbent on the leaders to provide a framework within which everyone can operate, as effectively as possible, in a transdisciplinary manner.<\/p>\n

I believe there are four pillars to this framework, that are characteristics of high-performing environments.<\/p>\n

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  1. A clear direction of travel<\/li>\n
  2. Solid collective decision-making processes<\/li>\n
  3. Processes robust to pressure<\/li>\n
  4. A culture of curiosity and learning<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Your role as a leader is to ensure that these are in place so your team operates as effectively as possible.<\/p>\n

    I explored the first two pillars here<\/a>. Let\u2019s now delve into the third and fourth pillars below.<\/p>\n

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    1. Processes robust to pressure<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      \u00a0<\/strong>The complexity of the sporting season ensures that as results wax and wane so will pressure and external noise. The processes you have in place need protecting from this pressure and the associated emotion.<\/p>\n

      For some simpler tasks and processes you can have checklists or flight manuals where processes can be recorded, ratified and referred back to (1). However, these only go so far and will be less useful as the complexity dials up.<\/p>\n

      When you and your staff are committed to helping the team perform, it is easy (or just human nature) to become overly emotional about performances (both positively and negatively), and this can leach into your decision-making processes. Leaders need to be aware of the propensity for this as well as the influence of subconscious bias on any decision making (this is a wider topic than the scope of this series but a good place to start is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, 2). Setting up your team\/environment to reduce the effect of these factors is key to leading your team effectively.<\/p>\n

      As the leader, with your wider viewpoint and greater access to those higher up the organisational hierarchy, you should have a greater appreciation of the pressures you and your team face. As emotions tend to affect quality decision making, it is your job to be judicial over which pressures you allow to filter through to your team and which you will bear.<\/p>\n

      Objectivity must become a cornerstone of making decisions. We need to collect data on the subject (player or situation) over which we are trying to make a decision. This data then needs turning into information (tables, graphs and other visualisations) by adding context (use of appropriate statistics) to help the reader understand the magnitude of any effect. This information turns into knowledge when the reader reflects on the new information, with respect to what they already know and understand.<\/p>\n

      As we have discussed, each person will have their own unique take on a given set of information. Organisations that can successfully make the leap from individual to organisation level knowledge will be better prepared to perform in complexity.<\/p>\n

      The threat to an organisation if knowledge sits siloed with individuals is two-fold. Firstly, the quality of the decisions being made will fall and secondly the organisation is fragile to an individual leaving and removing the intellectual property (IP) from the building.<\/p>\n

      I believe the threat to the organisation is greater from the loss when IP walks out of your facility, than if that person was to be employed by a rival team. As each organisation is its own complex mix of culture, practitioners and athletes, it is difficult to transfer tacit knowledge from one environment directly into another.<\/p>\n

      Once you have objective information around which you can make decisions, you can begin to plan what you and your team will deliver. This planning process provides a framework for everyone involved to work within and should remain just that: a framework. Remember that in complexity the person closest to the action has the most information in a given moment. This framework provides a set of parameters that act as a fallback, against which new information can be assessed. In the moment, under pressure, this framework coupled with a clearly understood direction of travel from you as leader should help the practitioner on the ground make a better decision.<\/p>\n

      As the outcomes of the decisions we have made as a team become apparent our framework can become the basis against which we can reflect and review the decisions made, by providing a reminder of the conditions as they existed in that moment. This again helps to objectify the review process and fosters a culture of psychological safety (3).<\/p>\n

      Understanding the complex nature of this environment has helped me to appreciate that we cannot get everything right all of the time (remember there is never a perfect game) and my first thought when things fall down is: how could I, \u00a0as an intrinsic part of this complex system, have acted differently through the process to have affected a better outcome? This helps me to remain less emotional when analysing failures as and when they happen. I do this before turning my lens outwards to think how we could have done better as a team.<\/p>\n

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      1. A culture of curiosity and learning<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        The fact that complex systems are never perfect and we cannot predict outcomes with 100% accuracy creates uncertainty. In their book Radical Uncertainty, John Kay and Mervyn King describe uncertainty as \u201cthe result of our incomplete knowledge of the world, or about the connection between our present actions and their future outcomes.\u201d (P. 13, 4). We need all members of the team to understand that although this space is uncertain, performance will emerge from it.<\/p>\n

        There is then a gap that exists between our expectations and the outcomes. Acknowledging the inevitable existence of this gap allows the leader to be more sanguine and less frustrated by it, putting us in a better headspace to explore why the gap exists like it does and how we can narrow it in the future. I see little point in the wasted energy that would be spent railing against this gap\u2019s existence. Rather I see this gap as the learning space, a space to be curious about. It is the space where the information mentioned in the previous section becomes knowledge.<\/p>\n

        When we reflect on information in the context of what we already know, we develop our knowledge base. This should then spark off further questions as to why we ended with the result we did, restarting the cycle back to collecting more data. This process is critical in the complex world. As the system shifts and changes, so do our levels of expertise (5). Further, knowledge developed in other environments and populations diminishes in power the further away from that population it moves. The most powerful learning will come from research done in our own group of athletes. This should be a mix of quick and dirty in-house enquiry and more formalised research carried out with partner universities and led by in-house research and development departments.<\/p>\n

        You also need to lead your team into this gap by putting in place structures that allow your team the time and space for reflection. We are really good in team sports at planning and doing, before all too soon the next fixture rears its head. You need to be intentional about reflecting and reviewing. Reflecting skills can be learnt and should be fostered amongst your team. Make reviews normal and model behaviour by openly reviewing the things you personally have done and seeking feedback. This normalises the feedback process and creates space for you to feedback to your team members more easily (6). Mix regular small hot reviews in the moment (7) with more analytical, larger reviews. In these, review a specific subject (e.g. grade 2b hamstring injury rehab) as opposed to generalised time periods (e.g. pre-season). Signpost your reviewing – create a structure or framework around how you want to reflect and share it with the team ahead of time. Your team should then turn up in the spirit of reflection, rather than having it sprung upon them. Most critical of all is to have concrete outcomes that everyone is aware of and can be held to.<\/p>\n

        The second space we need to be mindful of as leaders is the space from which the performance of our team emerges.<\/p>\n

        In 2012, Google embarked on a large study to try and discover what made a successful team within their organisation, they called it Project Aristotle (8). Google studied 180 teams from across the business and looked many combinations of factors (e.g. personality traits, emotional intelligence, demographics and skillsets of team members) that they hoped would indicate levels of learning and performance. Whichever way they crunched the data, they could find no pattern as to what would bring success. Some of the factors that did not influence team success intuitively sounds like items that would be important when trying to build a successful team:<\/p>\n