Why it wasn't the Ref's fault

Two weeks ago, there was an incident during the Liverpool vs Tottenham game. A goal was scored which was then checked by VAR and incorrectly ruled to have been offside. The referee disallowed the goal and Liverpool went onto lose the game.?

Writing about these events immediately after the fact isn’t helpful. The conversation is usually highly emotive making it hard to be objective. As a Liverpool fan, this might be a point I am making to myself.

A few days after the event, PGMOL (the organisation that manages professional referees and officials) released the voice recording of the exchange between the VAR team and the referee. I think they did that in the interest of transparency, they’d stated that it was down to human error, and I think they wanted to make that clear. Football is incredibly tribal, so I suspect they wanted to kill the potential argument that this was a deliberate act of favouritism.?

When I listened to the audio, what struck me was how hard it was to understand what was being said over the radios. The communication was cluttered, the word ‘mate’ seemed to come after every statement. The technician who noticed that there had been an error asked if the decision-maker was happy with the decision when it was clear they’d got it wrong. It sounded like the decision-maker wasn’t concentrating on what he was saying… probably because he was trying to do something else although I am speculating here as there was no accompanying video. What is clear is that he wasn’t paying attention to what the technician was saying.

I appreciate that I am writing this with the benefit of hindsight which is always 20:20. I have worked with the match officials at PGMOL and I know they’re good people trying to do a very challenging job under enormous scrutiny and pressure. I’d argue that a Premiership Referee gets more scrutiny over their decisions than some Secretary’s of State but that’s a different article.

So what can we learn from this event? How can we prevent these sorts of things from happening again? And how might this event be applicable to your organisation??

VAR is relatively new so there is an element of learning that needs to take place. I think one of the areas that needs to be addressed is that of voice procedure when talking on a radio. We assume that these things are like mobile phones, they’re not, they work differently and consequently we have to use them differently.

When communication is made harder, as it often is on a radio network when you’re surrounded by thousands of fans, you need to communicate differently.

In the Corps we used to use the pneumonic, CLAP, ‘Clear, Loud, Audible, with Pauses’. Using words like ‘mate’ was described as ‘bad voice procedure’ and you would get corrected on it. What I mean by that is someone would tell you not to do it, you’d learn and get better.

Passing a message to someone is like a baton change in a relay, you have to be confident that they have received it. The responsibility for passing the message lies with person sending it. They need to be confident that the message has landed. One of the easiest ways you can do this is by testing what the receiver has heard by getting them to play it back to you.

In the Corps, we used to use the shorthand term ‘roger’ on a radio to mean that the message had been understood. If you didn’t understand or hear the message correctly, you’d make that point and say something like ‘say again all after (whatever you last heard)’. If you didn’t hear ‘roger’ back, you had to assume that the message had not been passed and keep trying to get it through.

These simple behaviours were reinforced using standardised language. NATO has set of mission verbs that make it explicit what a military unit is being asked to do. It works at all levels from section (eight Royal Marines) all the way up to brigade and beyond.

To ‘destroy’ something is to do exactly what it says but it’s not that often used in mission statements. In my career in the Royal Marines, we used to use the word ‘disrupt’ far more often which means ‘prevent your enemy from achieving their mission/aims’. That might mean destroy them, but it also allows for you to be creative, can you get them to surrender using an overwhelming force that gives them no other option? That would achieve the mission without the use of deadly force which is usually preferable.

This standardisation of language minimises the chances of messages being misunderstood. It creates an environment of absolute clarity. You hear it in submarine films when the Captain leaves the control room. He says ‘XO, you have the con.’ In response the Executive Officer will playback, ‘Aye Captain, I have the con.’ He sends the message, and he receives confirmation that the other person has understood it.

Last week, I worked with a team to help them define one of their most important processes. As the process continued it became obvious that there were handovers between team members. We created clarity on the stages of the process but more importantly, who was the ‘supporting’ and ‘supported’ lead at different stages of the process. This helped to define accountability and ownership, not to catch people out but to create clarity.

This isn’t really about PGMOL, it is about improving communication. Every single person has communication as a strength on their CV. If that was really true, there would be very little miscommunication and I think most of us know that isn’t the case.?

One of the basics of Organisational and team performance is clarity. What can you take from this article to help create just a bit more clarity in your organisation?

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Tim Pointer - thank you for your input and for helping me recognise that there was something here to write about!

Mike Davis-Marks - hopefully I have the submarine terminology correct!

Jamie Weaver CMgr FCMI GCGI - hopefully I have the VP elements correct but I am sure you have some principles to add that will be useful. Good to see you walking the dog in the dark this morning!