Tempo, manipulating relationships.

Time for a quick recap: we have raw physical energy being turned into information that we use to make decisions. Most of these decisions involve other people so we engage still more people in the solution or exploitation of them. But just as soon as we have dealt with one decision we find another so we need to attend to and engage with a new mix of people. This cycle goes on with everyone on the field, there’s no blueprint or schedule for who deals with who or when.  

Rao’s concept of tempo gives us some valuable insight into how we move through this process. “Tempo has three elements: rhythm, emotion and energy” and manipulating tempo is largely a matter of timing. Here he uses driving in traffic as a metaphor to explain this idea. “Driving graphically illustrates the four main skilled behaviors that constitute the overall skill of timing: merging, going with the flow, pacesetting and disrupting.”

Merging is entering a new transitory relationship. You slide into traffic so as not to disturb the pace of others. But it does change everyone’s relationship. This creates the three or more systems problem and has to be resolved. But before you can enter a new relationship you have to leave the one you’re currently in, “every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.” This also means that, at least for a brief moment, you’ll be caught between two worlds. Finally merging may or may not require a change of tempo from the player who is looking to ‘move into the new relationship.’ This is common when players move from one so called level to another.

Going with the flow is being in a harmonized state with the surrounding elements of the system. It’s the “orderly (and pleasant) state” that Boyd refers to in D&C. But in every group this state won’t last long. (Long is a relative term.) The tempo cannot be ‘perfect’ for every member and as they look around they begin to notice. At some point it will become too fast or too slow and they will have to decide if they should stay put or look for another group. In essence the ‘group’ will begin to dissolve as a cohesive unit. 

Pacesetting is the “art of harmoniously driving the natural tempo of your environment away from its current state towards your preferred state – slower or faster – in non-disruptive ways.” It’s a mutually agreed on change in tempo. Another way to say this is a local entity alters the global tempo to a new state. You can see this when a key player picks up the pace of ball circulation and other players pick up this cue.

Dissonance “is what will turn a potentially dangerous and stupid sort of behavior into a productive one.” This has “the potential to create irreversible structural changes.” The birth of “Total Football” is an example of dissonance that morphed into pacesetting. Ajax was playing against an East European team and couldn’t get the ball off of their midfield. Velibor Vasovic, the Ajax sweeper became frustrated and pushed deep into midfield. The chaos he created for the opponents was enough to get Ajax two goals, the win and show Michels what was needed for Total Football. What was a moment of improvisation and risk became the framework for the playmaking style of soccer.

The art of creating transitory, dynamic and complex systems that can actually do something is the aim of Teambuilding. “During a ninety-minute match every player constantly has to anticipate the ever-changing situations and make split second decisions about what option to take. They are created by the actions of teammates and opponents. The true top-notch players all possess the quality to continuously and quickly oversee all the possible options… The solutions will express directly or indirectly the aim of the match: to win or at least not to lose. The complexity and unpredictability of the ever-changing situations prevent the perfect match from ever being played.” Rinus Michels.

Certainly one of the qualities that all top-notch players possess is the ability to get the most out of other players. Not only can they adjust their own tempo but they can also influence those around them. Knowing when and who to merge with, when to go with the flow, when and how to change others gears and finally when to throw caution to the wind are the tools these players use in order to dictate the pace, i.e. tempo of the game. 

“You win battles by knowing the enemy's timing”

Now I’ll reintroduce the element of timescales. As Smith & Thelen pointed out, “we must be concerned with how different timescales interact.” The difference in timescales has two components, duration and relationship. A difference in duration is simple to grasp. A thinks, grows, acts faster, i.e. has a shorter timescale in a specific domain than B. It’s safe to assume that you will find a difference between even so-called identical systems, i.e. players on the same team.

The relationship between systems is something else. Venkatesh Rao, echoing Marianne Paget’s “acts of deciding” explains;

“popular decision-making models rely on what you might call point logic: the idea that a decision is a point, a fork in a temporal road… Fortunately, a better scheme, which organizes understanding of time around intervals rather than points, was worked out by planning researcher James Allen in the early 1980’s. This scheme, called interval logic, is a way of thinking about time… The idea of interval logic is simple… given two intervals of time… how many qualitatively distinct relations can there be between them? The answer is thirteen (six pairs of symmetrical relationships, and one special case).” The relationships are pictured above.

In a real world setting two systems will operate in one of the twelve symmetrical relationships. (Number 7, being equal is highly unlikely in soccer so we’ll discount it.) A starts before B: A starts after B; A starts B: A is started by B and so on. As long as you view the relationship retroactively, or, proactively with only two systems in a static environment you can use this model. (This is how the ‘freeze method’ of coaching works. It either recreates a situation for linear explanation or creates a scripted situation where the coach walks players through a series of relationships. It’s pure either/or – cause/effect reasoning in a static environment. Consider the language in Rao’s chart as a coaches instructive ‘ideas’ and you’ll get the picture.)

Retroactively life’s a done deal, a closed system and these relationships simply explain what happened. The principles of Taylor’s scientific management work very well. Two systems in a static environment also work for the same reason. So here’s the rub, it’s scientific managements inability to predict, let alone control the future where the trouble starts. Two cases illustrate this point, the three or more and uncooperative systems problems.

Looking back at the chart, imagine a relationship, 1-6 and then insert another system, “C” into it. You can’t tack it onto the beginning or end, it’s included in the moment of interaction between A&B. C reintroduces the six ‘W’ questions for A&B. In soccer systems are a relationship between individuals, groups or an individual and a group. Example, you can have a relationship to the left back or the two central defenders as an individual or as a part of another group, i.e. twin strikers. Now, insert another player or group into your relationship. This will be an anomaly that enters your attention. Once that happens the original relationship will altered in time if not meaning. You will be too early, too late in the original plan or in a whole new environment altogether. (In soccer the number of possible groups is staggering. The transitory nature of complex systems keeps the every player in a state of flux as to which system they are in and which one to attend.)

The later problem addresses the models weakness in a competitive situation. It assumes cooperation between the systems. (A necessary condition for the freeze coaching method.) In the case of an active and alert opponent this isn’t likely. It’s the old “they know that I know that they know that I know” game and one they don’t want to play, at least on your terms. You may want to ‘meet’ a system, say the ball so you aim to start ahead of them. They are determined not to let that happen so they start ahead of you instead. This situation is captured by Miyamoto Musashi’s line, “You win battles by knowing the enemy's timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect” and timing is all about timescales.

The six ‘W’s’ relentless cascade and feedback.

(Or how we get hopelessly lost in brain lock.)

Establishing harmonized transitory complex systems is easy when everyone starts from the same place (Orientation), answers the six ‘W’ questions and their follow-ups within the same timescale and the environment doesn’t change. Good luck with that.

Basically the six ‘W’ questions are:

  

1.       What is my job?

2.       Where should I be?

3.       Who is my concern?

4.       When do I act?

5.       How do I go about it?

       6.       Why does this matter?

Lists like this are useful for understanding complicated systems and multiple-choice tests. Alone they are useless in addressing complex problems. First off, every question is dependent on an answer to one of the other questions. For example, your job depends on where you are. Where you are constrains when you should act and so on. Which question comes first is itself an open question.

(Note, all of these questions are from the point of view of the individual. This POV will conflict with the POV of the group, the collective POV. That POV is based on the transitory complex system the individual is in at the moment in question and that moment can only be viewed in retrospect. If that’s confusing consider what’s going on during a game.)

Venkatesh Rao writes about the underlying ideas for each of these questions. “What gives you the study of options. Why gives you the study of causation, motivation, reward and punishment. How leads you to the classic problems of means-end reasoning, such as planning and scheduling.” Questions of “when, where and who” are “about timing, framing, background and context.” This perspective reinforces the notion that this isn’t a set list but a grab bag of interrelated questions that has to be answered in a time competitive dynamic environment. To stay too long on any one question can take you down a rabbit hole of indecision.

In the diagram above consider the change for each player when the ball moves from $1 to $2. On the field this ‘difference that makes a difference’ is three feet. But, in a cascading sense the answer to each question will be modified for every player. For a and d “what is my job” shifts and that change cascades throughout the field. Now consider the influence that the open independent movement of every player and the ball has on how each individual deals with the six questions. You soon find yourself skipping the follow-up questions and focusing on a smaller and smaller slice of the big picture. The ultimate small slice is ball watching where all six questions are rolled up into one overriding concern, the ball.

The need to get to the important questions first, and the knowledge that you’ll be short changing others is important. In a time competitive environment like soccer optimal is rarely an option and 20-20 hindsight is only good after the fact. Good enough decisions based on incomplete information and understanding will have to do. It clears the way for the next action and helps to avoid brain lock.

Transitory complex systems.

In the last post the complex systems exhibited a permanent nature. You can count on them. But there is another type of complex system that deserves attention. These are the transitory ones that people form in spontaneous and unpredictable manner.

Here’s a simple diagram of a 4v4 scenario. The attackers are numbered 1-4, the defenders are a-d and the ball is $. At any moment each player has a wide number of options to consider. The options can be mixed between members of both teams and the ball. For example, 1 may have $, a, b and 4 under observation while c has 1, $, d and 3 in mind. As long as no one moves independently you can connect the dots in a straightforward fashion. If-then scenarios are easy. This is what the freeze technique does in practice. It removes the element of complexity, i.e. independent movement and reduces the game to being simply complicated. At this level soccer can be understood in linear cause and effect terms. Even the permanent complex systems can be manipulated, at least on paper, to this level.

But on the field it’s different. No two players have the same ‘geographic view’ of the game, neither the same temporal sense nor starting point. Everybody is making sense of the game from entirely different points of view, perspectives and timescales. Sometimes it’s a wonder that anyone is on the same page at all.

This is a problem for communication. Harmonized action depends on at least an implicit level of understanding and agreement between players. If players are unaware of each other this is impossible. If they are aware of each other, but can’t agree on a course of action it’s difficult at best. When you add the dynamic nature of the game in the mix, i.e. every player independently moving where and when they choose while the ball is also in motion the opportunities to create and maintain transitory complex systems is very difficult. Players need to know who, when and where to connect with and share why they are connected. This way they can pool their resources for what they need to get done how they’ll do it. The time to carry out all of this may only be milliseconds and then they have to start all over.

While this is in another post it's worth repeating Boyd's point from D&C;

“The degree to which we cooperate, or compete, with others is driven by the need to satisfy this basic goal. If we believe that it is not possible to satisfy it alone, without help from others, history shows us that we will agree to constraints upon our independent action—in order to collectively pool skills and talents in the form of nations, corporations, labor unions, mafias, etc. —so that obstacles standing in the way of the basic goal can either be removed or overcome. On the other hand, if the group cannot or does not attempt to overcome obstacles deemed important to many (or possibly any) of its individual members, the group must risk losing these alienated members. Under these circumstances, the alienated members may dissolve their relationship and remain independent, form a group of their own, or join another collective body in order to improve their capacity for independent action.”

“In the study of development, we must be concerned with how different timescales interact.”

In the complexity-action post I defined a complex system as a model that includes action. I’ll expand on this idea by using Nina Degele’s description of complex systems;

“The systems I will therefore term complex are those characterized by irreversibility, non-linearity, emergence and interconnectedness under dynamic conditions… A multitude of elements, hierarchies and interdependencies do not yet turn a system complex, but merely complicated. In order for it to be complex, it takes state modifications, at high speed… In this sense, time is the complexity-generating factor, able to transform a complicated system into a complex one.”

 

In the same post I mentioned that there are many different systems in soccer and that they are usually organized as parts or functions, (actions/responsibilities). From Degele’s description we can see how many of these models fail to capture the complex nature of the game. They lack state modifications at high speed. However there are some models that do a better job than others. So what happens when these different complex systems interact? Logically the game takes on even greater complexity.

Let’s consider three complex systems models that can be used to understand the game.

First, OODA loops. This doesn’t need any explanation.

Second, the four main moments. These are; in possession, losing possession; opponents in possession; regaining possession. Each team occupies the moment opposite their opponent. From kick-off to final whistle this relationship doesn’t vary, only the length of time that a team is ‘in one of the moments’ is a variable.

Third, the KNVB’s TIC model. TIC stands for technique, insight and communication, but not as isolated entities, they are an integrated whole. It’s ‘explicit and implicit communication’ that makes the Dutch system complex; from Coaching Soccer, “Communication in this context refers to the interaction between the players and all the elements involved in the game… TIC covers all the attributes needed to play and to influence the game. An additional complicating and influencing factor is the continual flux of these ingredients. Situations change continuously as the game progresses, and the players must repeatedly reorient themselves and make new decisions.” That is pure Boyd.

The game can be understood using any one of these models. Scouts will note what teams do in, and how fast they transition between the moments. A coach will note a player’s technical execution and tactical understanding. A player will get inside an opponents OODA loop for an advantage. Each model catches the game from a different perspective and includes the element of time. All three meet Degele’s description above.

But in each one of these models time means something different. With Barcelona, possession maybe measured in minutes. A tackle may take seconds to frame and execute. Getting an idea may happen in a microsecond. The answer to these irreversible non-linearities of time difference is not to separate out each one as a disconnected process, but to embrace them collectively. Linda B. Smith & Esther Thelen make a great point that is too often ignored when trying to put the pieces together on the field;

“The second key assumption of the dynamics systems approach is that behavioral change occurs over different timescales...  Thus, in the study of development, we must be concerned with how different timescales interact.” The successful interaction between timescales is what makes good theory. It’s the inevitable mismatches in reality that too often spell disaster.