How coaching football has brought continuous improvement to life

Plan, Do, Review

Plan, do, review was the mantra for designing and executing training sessions, taught by the FA on the Level 2 coaching football course, when I did it a few years ago. It’s not a new concept and is at the heart of continuous improvement, 6 sigma and productivity advice. Continuous improvement process use PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act), 6 Sigma use DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control). From the world of self-improvement I embraced DADA (Dream, Act, Deliver, Adapt) which as an inveterate day dreamer it has helped me move to action and delivery.

Plan, do, review really come to life for me more recently when planning sessions while working with new coaches and kids new to football. The practices have to be thought through and well planned, in order to be simple, easy to explain and execute. You get a lot of feedback in the moment while doing and plenty of time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t after the session. The addition I have made to the process is to add ‘adapt’ so reflections on what worked and what didn’t can be applied in later sessions.

Dave Brailsford rides tandem with Carol Dweck

The addition of adapt encourages the continuous improvement process that worked so well for Dave Brailsford, the British cycling coach. His philosophy on marginal gains was simply if you improve every area by just 1% then the small gains would add up to a remarkable improvement. After one year in the role of Performance Director in Athens in 2004 Britian won 2 Gold medals, four years later in Beijing the haul was 8 gold medals making them the most successful British sports team in Olympic history. I think he made his point.

The ideas of the American psychologist Carol Dweck has also had a big influence on how I implement the Plan, Do, Review, Adapt process. Carol Dwerk’s book ‘mindset’ advocates encouraging a ‘growth mindset’ amongst kids and is the principle advocated within primary education in many British Schools today. However, advocacy and action are two different things, as any parent will know. Encouraging a child to try something they don’t think they can do or have been told they are no good at is hard. The growth mindset is all about trying and failing and trying again, embracing purposeful practice and as a teacher, parent or coach praising engaging in the process rather than the outcome. For the growth mindset to embed it’s having a go that counts and then learning from the experience.

Learning from coaching

So, this is where football coaching has come in. Just under ten years ago, like many parents, I started by helping with my son’s football team. As an ex Rugby player who enjoyed playing football but was never coached (or very good) I decided I should embrace the continuous learning principle I advocate. I have completed many coaching qualifications and development sessions to try and get better since then. What I have found is that the only way I get better is to keep showing up, try, fail and adapt. Fail is a loaded word but it works to describe that nothing ever works perfectly and there is always room for improvement.

What I have also learnt while coaching is that the process isn’t linier. I do spend time before any coaching session planning: deciding on what the objective of the session is, what skills, techniques, and capabilities we are focusing on, outline exercises and structure to the session. The do, review, adapt is very much part of the practical session. When working with kids, especially young ones the feedback is quick. If they don’t get it, get bored or it just isn’t working you can see quickly and have a choice, soldier on regardless or adapt. While I have learnt to persevere if the issue is they are just struggling learning something new, I have also learnt to adapt quickly if something simply isn’t working. The simple life lesson is I could spend hours planning and preparing but until you ‘do’ you don’t learn anything of practical value.

Plan, Do, Review, Adapt, has become one of my behavioural cornerstones for coaching, work and life. I would be interested to hear what theory you have put into practice and how you have adapted it to make it work for you.

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