Sunday, December 31, 2006

Coaching's links to modern management theory: Part 1


It seems the game is about possession (to set-up scoring opportunities and frustrate the opposition) and taking the scoring opportunities with percentage shots.

This is the 'total football' philosophy of Dutch football. There is a direct link there to the American quantitative management expert Deming, total quality management and the Japanese industrial performance from the 1950s - and what is now known as the business excellence framework). Which in turn has a parallel with Deming's bitter rival the German qualititaive sociologist Drucker - who first defined management by objectives and the knowledge worker (among many other things). Druker was for individual excellence and people, while Deming was for the team and no hero performance - deming believe variation and therefore errors could be eliminated through analysis of their route causes. So Dutch football is about error less team performance (always stretching the possession stat), and Brazilian football, and in a different way, the English Premier League, is about the individual as a hero.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey John, we really should take this one for a walk in the off season.

Anonymous said...

yikes, not her slimy entreaties, I meant the topic! Do a bit of stat and management analysis, yes? Noticed the polished graphs and the refernces, thats all.

john said...

open to ideas Wayne re stats and management analysis.