{"id":35002,"date":"2026-05-21T10:56:43","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=35002"},"modified":"2026-05-21T11:00:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T10:00:20","slug":"how-to-balance-integration-and-excellence-five-questions-performance-directors-should-ask-themselves","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/how-to-balance-integration-and-excellence-five-questions-performance-directors-should-ask-themselves\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Balance Integration and Excellence: Five Questions Performance Directors Should Ask Themselves"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 21 May 2026 <\/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

How to Balance Integration and Excellence: Five Questions Performance Directors Should Ask Themselves<\/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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We asked performance leads at the Philadelphia 76ers, Melbourne Storm, Everton and Rajasthan Royals for their advice on navigating the complexities of sports performance.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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By John Portch<\/h6>\n
As Tom Kelley once asked, if you blew up all the systems at your organisation, what would you keep and what would you change?<\/h6>\n

Kelley, a partner at global design firm IDEO, was an inspiration for Lachlan Penfold<\/a> when he was appointed Head of Performance at the Melbourne Storm in 2017. The team were reigning NRL premiers and keen to build on that success.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a challenge that I put forward to all of our football staff, coaches, performance staff, football ops,\u201d Penfold told the Leaders Performance Podcast in 2024. \u201cIf we blew this up, what would we keep and what would we change?\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a necessary question because, as he explained, \u201csometimes when you have a lot of success, you don\u2019t want to change things because you think that there\u2019s only one way to do it.\u201d Instead, he is a firm believer that there is \u201cmore than one way to skin a cat\u201d, which is central to Kelley\u2019s argument. \u201cThat was a really refreshing approach of how to go about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Penfold\u2019s approach both encouraged collaboration across the Storm\u2019s performance team and harnessed the expertise in the room as the group sought to provide the best possible performance support to their players.<\/p>\n

Below, we return to a selection of our most insightful conversations with performance directors to discuss their approach to balancing the need for integration with excellence and pose the reader five questions.<\/p>\n

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  1. Are your team\u2019s efforts coordinated or are you just busy?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Daily meetings are a must, even for those who admit they\u2019re \u201cnot a big meetings guy\u201d such as Michael Italiano<\/a>, the Head of Athletic Performance at the Rajasthan Royals.<\/p>\n

    For all that, he finds the expanse of a cricket field to be ideal for both formal and informal check-ins, as he told the Leaders Performance Institute last year.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe walk around the ground is just pure gold,\u201d he says of the deep conversations a lap of the ground can inspire. \u201cWhen you\u2019re at training there\u2019s something about walking and looking out over the ground that brings a sense of openness rather than being across the table from someone, which at times can feel, maybe subconsciously, quite confronting.\u201d<\/p>\n

    At daily 9:30am meetings, Italiano attempts to read the room. \u201cI\u2019m almost like \u2018OK, who do I need to check-in with? Who do I need to bring more energy to? Who do I need to be more curious with? Maybe there was a player who has been off in training the last two days and I need to be more curious with them, their data and wellness scores.\u201d That curiosity is a must because he cannot see everything.<\/p>\n

    From the IPL to the NBA, where Simon Rice<\/a>, the Vice President of Athlete Care at the Philadelphia 76ers, uses structured check-ins to establish communication loops on athlete priorities.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe want to try and distil it from one to three points in each of those areas. We then meet as a larger group, all of health and performance, so we can go through each player,\u201d he told the Leaders Performance Podcast in 2025. \u201cWhat the other clinicians are doing is really important in my view. Whatever issues I\u2019ve seen here it is very rare, almost never, that things get missed.\u201d<\/p>\n

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    1. How do you preserve expertise in an interdisciplinary system?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Shared goals do not mean a dilution of the expertise within a performance team, they merely indicate that specialists are contributors to the holistic performance picture.<\/p>\n

      As Rice said of the Sixers, \u201cwe can have the best strength coaches, the best nutritionist \u2013 and that\u2019s really important \u2013 we have excellent clinicians, but the context is really what underpins it. It doesn\u2019t really matter how good that rehabilitation plan is if we don\u2019t understand the context\u201d. Once that context is understood, \u201cthat allows us to put the pieces around them to support the athlete.\u201d<\/p>\n

      \u201cI need to think like a football coach,\u201d said Penfold of his work at the Storm. \u201cIn my role as a head of performance, often there\u2019s a physical element to what we do but I also need to think like a football coach; how is this going to make them a better football player versus just<\/em> a fitter, faster, stronger football player?\u201d<\/p>\n

      It is a shared performance team goal. \u201cAre they prepared to put developing a better football player first and having a growth mindset around that versus just staying in their little bubble and just working on their area?\u201d Penfold continued. \u201cSo there\u2019s a lot of parts that that go into making up a successful team or a great team outside of just the wins and losses.\u201d<\/p>\n

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      1. How do you approach trade-offs?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        The pursuit of trade-offs is all about balancing competing tensions in performance.<\/p>\n

        Jack Nayler<\/a>, for one, is convinced that control has its limits. \u2018The more we try to control the system, the more we leave ourselves open to system errors adversely affecting our progress in the long-term,\u2019 the Head of Sport Science at Everton wrote in an article for the Leaders Performance Institute. He added: \u2018we cannot with complete accuracy predict what will happen in the future; all decisions are essentially gambles.\u2019<\/p>\n

        Penfold is of a similar mindset. \u201cIf you\u2019ve got 35 players, they\u2019re 35 different players with different responses,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s always a lot of different decisions you\u2019ve got to make and hopefully you get more right than wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

        You certainly don\u2019t want to duplicate the work. \u201cIf we have three people doing five lots, all of a sudden we\u2019ve got 15 sets instead of five,\u201d said Rice, before outlining his true concern. \u201cIt\u2019s very rarely missing things \u2013 it\u2019s everyone trying to do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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        1. Do you and your team have a shared mental model of performance?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Simplification is key to Rice\u2019s approach at the Sixers; and he admitted that the team\u2019s small roster size (15 players) helps.<\/p>\n

          \u201cIt allows us to distil the focus areas which become the priorities in each area for each player; and then we have that in a spreadsheet,\u201d he said. \u201cThe flow on from there is reasonably straightforward to see what programmes need to be implemented for this player and who\u2019s going to drive them.\u201d<\/p>\n

          This is easier with a shared mental model, which is also something Nayler explored. \u2018The first thing to know is that in a complex environment, performance emerges from between the components an in inter-dependent manner, and not from the summation of the performance of each component in isolation,\u2019 he wrote.<\/p>\n

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          1. Does your culture enable or inhibit collaboration?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            Collaborative structures are critical, but \u201chave you created an environment that encourages people to want to get better, that allows them to thrive?\u201d<\/p>\n

            The question was posed by Penfold, who described how his department adapted its approach ahead of the 2024 NRL season. \u201cOne of the things I believe we did well this year, was to create an environment of joy in which people want to immerse themselves in getting better.\u201d<\/p>\n

            When there is that level of commitment in a psychologically safe environment, \u201cit becomes the \u2018mastery\u2019 environment\u201d that all performance directors crave.<\/p>\n

            What to read next<\/strong><\/p>\n

            <\/p>\n

            You Don’t Arrive Strategic: How Leaders Grow Into their Role<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n