Episode 2: Will Your Job Exist In The Future?
Dr Patrick Ward and David Joyce give us their thoughts on how roles in sport are changing and how that affects you.
Listen and subscribe on:
Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Overcast | Pocket Casts | RSS
Society is staring down the barrel at major changes to how we work, and it's no different in sport. If you're currently part of the sports ecosystem, or preparing to enter it, how will your role change over the coming decades?
To break things down, host Professor Sam Robertson is joined by Dr Patrick Ward and David Joyce. Patrick is the Director of Research and Development for NFL's Seattle Seahawks and Founder of strength and conditioning facility Optimum Sports Performance. David is a sports strategy and leadership consultant, internationally recognised for his work with elite clubs and Olympic teams across the globe, as well as his two best-selling books.
Together, Sam, Patrick and David discuss if technology will render certain roles obsolete, if new ways of consuming and participating in sport also mean more work to go around, and whether educational institutions are teaching content that will even be relevant by the time students graduate.
Want to dive deeper into this episode? Start here:
Man & Machine: Adaptive Tools For The Contemporary Performance Analyst (Taylor & Francis)
Richard H. Thaler: A Nobel Prize for Behavioural Economics (Taylor & Francis)
Full Episode Transcript
Intro
[00:00:00] Sam Robertson (Host): What will I be doing in 10 years? It's a question we all ask ourselves. Where will I be living? Who will I be dating? And the big one, what will I do for work? Whether it's shrinking wage budgets, or technological advancement reducing the need for human labor, "redundancy", "obsolescence", and "no longer required" are terms that none of us like to hear.
[00:00:23] Sport is grappling with its own set of fundamental questions relating to its workforces. Can people successfully take on multiple roles and responsibilities? Which sporting backgrounds make for the best managers? What should the structure of high-performance teams look like? And are educational institutions teaching content that will even be relevant by the time students graduate?
[00:00:46] If one thing is for sure, it's that change is inevitable, but with this change also comes a silver lining. Do opportunities for new, more impactful and fulfilling jobs emerge? Does an influx of skilled workers from other industries open new possibilities? And do new ways of consuming and participating in sport also mean more work to go around?
[00:01:08] I'm Sam Robinson, and this is One Track Mind.
(Music Interlude)
Interview One - Dr Patrick Ward
[00:01:12] Hello, and welcome to One Track Mind, a podcast about the real issues, forces and innovations shaping the future of sport. I'm your host, Sam Robertson. And today we ask: will your job exist in the future?
[00:01:31] Our first guest on this episode is Dr. Patrick Ward. Patrick is the director of research and development at the NFL franchise the Seattle Seahawks, where his work has a particular emphasis on data analysis in American football. Patrick holds a PhD in sports science and has previously worked within the Nike sports research lab. He's also the founder of the strength and conditioning facility, Optimum Sports Performance in Tempe, Arizona.
[00:01:56] Patrick delivers presentations on sports performance all over the world. I've had the pleasure to hear a few of these myself and his research interests include training and competition analysis as they apply to athlete health, injury, and performance across a variety of sports. Patrick, thank you for joining me on the show.
[00:02:14] Patrick Ward: Thanks for having me, Sam. Hopefully I will say something that is somewhat useful.
[00:02:19] Sam Robertson (Host): Well, as long as it's interesting, and useful as well would be great. [Laughter]
[00:02:23] Patrick Ward: Maybe we'll get two! [Laughter]
[00:02:26] Sam Robertson (Host): Now, one of the multiple reasons I wanted to ask you on the show was due to your varied background and, we talked a little bit about it there in the introduction, but it ties in really well to the episode's topic on where jobs in sport are heading.
[00:02:38]You've got a background in strength and conditioning, which also includes running a business, a PhD from a leading sports science university, and you're probably best known for your work externally, at least, in the application of analytics to sports performance. But then your job title with the Seahawks is director of research and development.
[00:02:55] Now you'll know, I don't mention these things necessarily to flatter you, but I more want to explore whether such a career journey is something you think is beneficial and also something that we may see more of in future. We'll talk about that in a moment, but first and foremost, how did you end up on that journey? Was that pathway strategic or do you simply have many varied and multiple interests?
[00:03:15]Patrick Ward: I think it's probably more than I get bored with things after a while and I just look for something else to do. Having my own facility or my own business, I mean, I guess I'm kind of lucky, right? I've seen all sides of an industry. I've had my own business. I've worked in corporate America at Nike, even though it was a research lab, it's still a corporate facility. I've worked in pro sport, supervised some students at different universities. So some academia. I taught a little bit at a college when I was in Tempe, Arizona as well.
[00:03:46] So I've kind of got to see all different sides of the industry, which has been a lot of fun, but the journey has definitely not been a straight and narrow road, that's for sure. I started the facility because I think most of us, we all start out in this industry as a strength coach, on some level, because we're interested in working out and fitness and we probably played sport at a young age and got super interested in it. My master's degree was in exercise physiology. And so I started my facility because I realised quickly I didn't want to work for anybody else. I just kind of wanted to do my own thing.
[00:04:20] So as I had this facility, I was in Phoenix, Arizona, like you said, in Tempe. And for those who are not from the States, Tempe is like dry desert climate. It is very consistent temperature, which makes it a nice hub for professional golfers to live, and for year-round soccer and baseball. So most of the major league baseball teams will have their facilities there, their minor league facilities there. And also for endurance athletes who are coming there to train who want mountains, and you can ride up two hours to Flagstaff and get altitude and you have very consistent weather. So you don't have to worry about pouring down rain and having to miss your workout. So you'd get a lot of Olympians that would come through on training camps. So Tempe was a nice place to set up shop. So I kind of just started on my own and it was hard and it was slow going, and one of the minuses of working for yourself is that pay isn't always consistent. So I quickly realised I had to do something, when I kind of sat down and wrote out my business plan, like what would set me apart from every other place in Phoenix, what would set me apart from the CrossFit gyms, and all of those things.
[00:05:31] And so one of the things that I thought would set me apart was, hey look like everybody is coming here to train, it's a consistent climate for training of all these different sports, let's be really good about quantitatively showing the person that they're getting better. And this was a way that you could turn around to like a sports agent for a baseball player or an NBA player and say like, "Hey look, we improved this guy over the past eight weeks". In doing that, right, that gave them confidence to then send or recommend other players that they might be representing to you in the off season and things like that. So that was kind of how I got into saying like, wow, there's so much more to strength and conditioning than just writing training programs. We can actually quantify the work we do and learn from it.
[00:06:17] And so that was where I started to get the bug of, hey we're collecting all this data, how are we going to analyse it? So I was doing that. And my blog, and this was like, before blogging was cool, it was like 2005 or 2004, it was literally just a way to show people the things that I did and that's how people found out about me and that's how I got opportunities to speak at conferences and things like that. And then ultimately, that's how I got to Nike because they called and there was a guy who I had met via my blog, who worked in the research lab. And one day he just kind of called and said, "Hey, we've got this job opening up and it's on our team and we work with elite level athletes and we do research trying to understand them". And so I flew up and I did the interview and they offered me the job.
[00:07:00] And so I picked up and I moved - Portland, Oregon - and I worked at Nike for a while, for two years, on a team where we just did research on elite athletes. And we built like test batteries and the team that I was on, we actually created a physical test battery for the women's professional soccer league. So I traveled one year, with like Opta jump and all these things, and I got on planes and I went to every single professional women's soccer league team in the United States during training camp over the span of about eight weeks. And I tested every single girl in the league and we had this massive dataset and, I just kind of took it upon myself on the team to like, be the person to analyse it. In the research lab, you know, some of the biomechanists were a bit snarky, right, where they were like, look like you can't really tell us much about this stuff, you don't have a PhD. So I was like, man, that really irritates me that they think like that. So I bought this massive book by a statistician named Andy Field, it's called 'Discovering Statistics in R' and I told my boss, look, I'll get in here at 6AM and I'll do all of my work by 11, and then I need you to just let me like sit in the cafeteria for the rest of the day and drink coffee and I'm going to go through this page one by one, and I will analyse this data better than they can. And that's what I did. I just absolutely like locked down and I learned R and I learned as much stats as possible. And then that kind of brought me to Seattle.
[00:08:25] They were looking for a sports science analyst and they had called Nike and they said, "Hey, we heard you did this test battery for the women's soccer league. Can you come up and show us what it is for our players?" And I did it and I brought some analysis back to them and they were kind of like, would you want to do this, like, every day? And I guess it was sort of like the evolution of your job as you, you know, as you grow. And it's probably much like yourself. This is something that Barry Drust told me when I was going through my PhD and he was like, when I started my education and I was really in depth in applied physiology, and I did all this research and, you know, I did my PhD because I wanted to be a researcher. And then very quickly, like, you're a professor and you're overseeing students and you're not really doing your own research anymore. Instead you're facilitating the students to do their research and you're helping them navigate the world of science. And the thing is , when you look back on it, you're like, geez, 30 years later, I'm not doing what I really set out to do. But he's like, the more important thing is if you look back and said, wow, 30 years ago, I'm still doing the same thing. That probably means you weren't very good because nobody gave you opportunities to move along and improve. [Laughter]
[00:09:40] Sam Robertson (Host): No, I think that's a fair point. Thanks for sharing that. I actually haven't heard that story before from you. So that is interesting for me to hear as well. There's so many things to pick up on in there. And you know, when you first started talking, I was thinking about the nonlinear journey that a lot of people, successful people, especially working in sport, have been on. And that's a whole nother discussion point maybe in and of itself that, you know, the skin in the game, the lessons you learn along the way, you almost need them in order to get where you want to go.
[00:10:07] But you mentioned point of difference. And I think in my career, I've seen the people that have been successful have had a point of difference. And sometimes there's a bit of luck involved in that, I guess, in terms of being in the right place at the right time. And obviously, as you mentioned, data, you probably got there at a time where data was starting to explode and that was useful as well. But the other word I was thinking about as well as point of difference was value as well. You showed that immediate value . That story all along that way, you were showing value to the organisations you were working with. So I think they 're two lessons I learned from that.
[00:10:38] So if we move forward from today, where do you, and again a fairly broad question here, but where do you see jobs heading from here? I mean, we're still probably not through this data explosion yet, I don't think anyway, but where do you see jobs heading generally in sport, across the board, from here?
[00:10:53] Patrick Ward: Well, I think you're always going to have strength coaches and physios and people who have to be hands-on with the athlete. I think from our side, from the data side, you have to be open to the fact that you're going to need to pivot and grow like you can't be naive to the fact that what you're doing now isn't exactly how it's going to be in 10 years.
[00:11:15] The best example I could probably give of that is like where I grew up in the United States in Cleveland, Ohio . In the early 1900s and mid 1900s, these were areas of like just booming growth and they were factory workers, you know, they were people that worked in the automotive industry on the factory line and they had these jobs where they had nice benefits and all of these nice things. And nobody sort of had the foresight to be like, hey, technology is moving really fast, eventually we're going to have machines doing exactly what you do. You know, you need to learn a new skill set or improve what you're doing, and none of them did that. And I think once you hit after World War II, it's like over 50% of the GDP is from science and technology. These are very depressed parts of the United States. Northern England has places like that, I'm sure you can name places in Australia that are very much the same, where it's like the land that time forgot. And I think, if you're looking at jobs in sport and you're naive to the fact that the landscape is always changing, you might be in a similar position.
[00:12:23] When I look at it, I just try and be really open to learning as many new things. I went from like, okay, data analysis, to then like, okay, can I learn a bit more about SQL and databases? To like how can I be better about building shiny apps and web apps and things where people can interact with the analysis that I do so it's not just a paper report that gets printed and left on a desk, but it's something that updates in real time. And you're always trying to think about how can I keep moving forward. And when I think about jobs in sport, there's a lot of tasks that are going to be automated as we move forward.
[00:13:01] You know, the scouts who sit and watch film all day - and I'm not saying that there's not value in domain expertise because there certainly is - but with the advancements of AI, wearable technologies, computer vision, like I probably don't need someone to watch 500 hours of football and estimate like, oh yeah, this guy, he's a really fast mover on the field with good change of direction. I mean, I can quantify that for all of those players in 10 minutes. I don't need you to chart that anymore. So I think a lot of those tasks, they slowly are going to get fizzled out and what is your ability to ensure that you can stay always on the front of that wave of being able to be informed and not just talk logically and do some of the grunt work , but also be able to show people its value.
[00:13:57] Sam Robertson (Host): So you mentioned this word 'curiosity', which I think is really important, and obviously it's not just the only trait that people are going to need in order to have success. And obviously we're not saying, and I don't think you're saying this either, that people who have long careers at one club are necessarily doing the wrong thing. Obviously it's important that you're progressing your career, but not only in positions, but also your learning.
[00:14:15] But I wonder, as we see some automation and we see some redundancy in tasks and things like that, but also we see pressures outside of sport - so wage bills for athletes, but also for staff, and, dare I say, at global pandemics and things like this - do you see the skill set of the person working in sport to be more generalist moving forward? They're going to have to do more things because there may be less staff around, and to justify their role? They maybe need to be more of a generalist rather than a specialist?
[00:14:45] Patrick Ward: It's a very real possibility. When I think about, like the COVID example that you just gave, and I think about, leagues not making as much money because fans aren't in the stands. And we've played an entire half a season without fans in the stands. There's a good possibility that any of us could be furloughed, because there's just not money to pay salaries. But there is always, probably, a need for certain things. And so whether you're in the club or you're outside of the club and maybe many of these roles become consultancies and teams pay à la carte what they want. That might be a way that the future goes, but inside of the building, I think the more generalist you can be, we always say the more you can do the better value you are.
[00:15:30]Being a specialist is really good. It's really important and it's very useful in a lot of different settings, particularly, if you're working in something very discrete. I think when you're working in something in sport, that's so dynamic, that there's a lot of moving pieces to, there's a lot of people who need different bits of information, the more you can broadly think about things and the more you can work across multiple streams and departments, I think the more valuable you become. A specialist, I mean, you could probably get on the call any specialist in AI, you can get someone who's done their entire PhD in neural networks, and they've gone super deep. Or you could get someone who knows a little bit of neural networks and a little bit of like 40 other algorithms and different things. I don't think that one is better than the other, but maybe the generalist, in the sports setting, is more useful because they can think about the world from all these different models. They can sit down and craft something that's quickly useful for people that are in the building. And then they could probably also turn it into something that's immediately usable for the end user, like an interactive report or something like that where it's like, you asked about players at this position, these are the four stats that we think are the most valuable because they're the most valid year over year, they provide us with the most context about the player's skills and abilities. Here's a quick report, it's totally interactive, type in the five players that you want, you're going to see where they pop up, how they relate to the other players, what your projections are, like those kinds of things. A generalist is probably going to be able to come in and think across how do I go full stack, right? From end to end. How do I acquire the data, build a simple model, or even a more complex model? And then how do I get it to the end user? Whereas the specialist is going to be highly nuanced on solving the problem with their particular skill set. And there might be times when you need that. Building a database, I probably want a specialist who's like a database administrator, who knows everything, rather than me like cobbling together something that's going to break, something that's not going to be sustainable in a year's time once you get enough data in it. Right? So I do think that the generalist becomes incredibly valuable as departments and sports organisations begin to pare down.
[00:17:54] Sam Robertson (Host): Firstly, I would agree. Secondly, I think another question relating to this is where's the responsibility lie here? As you know, I'm working at a university at the moment and this is not necessarily an overt criticism of universities, but I've seen it, the difficulties that universities have in ensuring that their training remains relevant. Particularly in these really fast moving areas like technology and computer science . And in the story you told at the start around your own career journey, there's moments in time where you've clearly taken the initiative yourself, throughout that journey, to develop yourself. But there's also examples where you were afforded those opportunities by your workplace , particularly at Nike that you mentioned there.
[00:18:34] I mean, it's probably a joint responsibility and I'm sure this is probably how you're going to answer this question, but are we all doing enough to ensure that people develop appropriately for that generalist skill set? Obviously there's a point of motivation yourself, there's the university's role, or the accrediting or the governing body to develop people, there's the workplace itself. These are all really important pieces in that puzzle. But the problem is of course you can only get certain elements of your training and your development from each of those different segments. For example, skepticism, computational thinking, measurement science. These are the things that you're going to get from a university more so than your own experiences, I think. Do you have a comment on that?
[00:19:10] Patrick Ward: I agree it's a two way street, being afforded opportunities to sit and work on things and learn things is, or like you said, some of these things like measurement and skepticism and computational thinking, which yeah probably I think of those as being more pedantic and needed to come from a university or some sort of authority figure like a supervisor, something like that. But again, similar to the work environment, the Nike example, that supervisor has to be good enough at affording you the opportunity to learn those things and providing the resources or the path to helping you do so.
[00:19:48] I think there is a lot that I would say you should place on yourself in terms of your journey. At the end of every season, I usually take a day or two break from not thinking about things. And then what I do is I open up a notebook and I jot down three or four things that I'm like, gosh, I really need to be better about learning this. Like I want to learn more about these types of algorithms. I want to learn more about this type of, you know, computer science. I want to learn more about this type of, you know, physiology, or something like that. And I jot those things down and then I kind of spin up my own curriculum, like okay what are the resources I'm going to need? In the off season I have X amount of time, what resources do I need to do this? And then I basically have like a notepad calendar on my computer screen and it has those three things listed and the resources. And then every single day I just fill out, okay I have to spend at least an hour on this and 20 minutes on that and 30 minutes on this, and I just write my curriculum and then I work the process and that's kind of always how I've always been. And maybe that's like unique, I don't know. You know, maybe people aren't as maniacal about that stuff as I am. But yeah, I think you're right. It is a two-way street, but things that are more pedantic, yeah they probably need to come from the supervisor who smacks your hand and says like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, hang on here, are we sure that's correct, and have you thought about this, And that's where good supervisors are valuable.
[00:21:17] And that's also where I think the United States PhD training is different than around the world. Like it's a very much more, you're almost like you're an extension of your supervisor. You teach their classes, you're their research assistant, you research the things that they're interested in. That's how you pick your supervisor. Whereas I think, at least for me, in my process at Liverpool John Moores, for any of the people that I've worked with at UTS, for any of the people that you've worked with, it's more about turning it back on the students. Saying like, well what are you interested in? Let's figure out a way to put you on that path to study that. And maybe I'm not the expert in X, but I do know the world of science and I do understand things like skepticism and I can get you to the people that are experts in X, as part of my job as your supervisor, but really my job is to facilitate your learning, the things that you're interested in, right?
[00:22:19] Sam Robertson (Host): Yeah, I would absolutely agree. I mean, invariably, they typically do end up still studying something somewhat related to you. But I think the distinction is that you're there also to assess the value of that topic or that question and whether it's even worth pursuing. And I think that's definitely how I see my role in that most of the time.
[00:22:36] Patrick, just in line with the title of the episode, I thought it'd be important that we talk about maybe some of the jobs that might disappear in the next decade or so, but also some of the new jobs that might be there on the horizon. What are some things you're seeing around the world, and indeed in the NFL, potentially some new jobs and maybe some ones that are disappearing?
[00:22:56] Patrick Ward: I mean, we kind of touched on, not disappearing, but maybe just ways of solving or making them easier, or perhaps being able to process more without the manual labor Like, you know, some of the notation stuff that scouts might do, or like the coaches lower on the totem pole that have to do like the, you know, staying up till 1 or 2AM and logging what side of the field is the tight end on and things like that. A lot of those things are going to be solved or can be solved now. They will be, I think, supplanted with technology. As far as like what's around the world,
[00:23:32] things that I think it would be really interesting for a sports organisation to take on would be... One is like you have a high-performance director, I think what probably you need is like someone that's in charge of evaluating process, like quantifying processes that the departments have and figuring out like, okay, is this the best way to go about this? How do we stay current with our thinking around this? And that probably bleeds into like decision-making. At the end of the day, someone has to make the decision and pull the trigger, whether it's the coach or the manager or whatever it is. And what I find, and I'm sure there's others who probably have seen some of the things that I'll describe, is, coaches and managers, they tend to be very reactive and they tend to judge the ramifications of their decision on an outcome. And that's not always the best way to do things because, I always try and say like, judge yourself on the process. The outcome is going to take care of itself if your process is good. You know, if I'm a poker player, I've got a hand that I'm like, okay, this is a really good hand, I'm going all in, I'm putting in $500, and I lose to the guy or girl across from me. And I lose on a hand where maybe there was like a one in 2000 chance that they were going to win. I'm going to step away from that table agitated that I lost $500, but confident that if I was in the same position tomorrow, I'm still putting that $500 down on the table, because the probability of them hitting that one in 2000 is really, really low still.
[00:25:17] And so I always try and say like, are we making the right decisions from a process standpoint versus worrying about the outcome? Because hinging on the outcome, more often than not, I think is going to just lead us astray. So a job around that, around helping people with decision-making. And there's lots of interesting books on this stuff. LikeRichard Thaler on just the whole concept of do firms maximise, right? Like this idea that people who are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, often they'll be defensive in their decision-making and not pony up the money for like, let's say a big investment, and not because they didn't do all the work and look at their process and think like, geez, this will be a really good investment. They don't do it because they're scared that if it blows up that they'll get fired. So they'd rather take the second best option, right? They never maximise. And you know, Thaler's work,he found some firms that actually give their CEOs. some leverage. They're like, look not every one of these investments is going to hit big. Some of them are going to lose. Many of them are going to lose! That's how investments go. It's just like scouting players. You're going to bust more than you hit. And so they kind of tell them like, look, we want you to take as many chances as you can on the ones that you think are good. The only way that we're going to be upset is if we can't turn around and you can't show us the process that led to get to this decision, because many of these will bust. And I think that's a fascinating way for an owner to think. And so I think it'd be a really cool job to have someone in place to help people wrap their head around decision-making.
[00:26:53] Like, we had a player get hurt and he got shot with some painkiller and he wanted to play and so he played and then he went out in the game and he got hurt and he needed surgery. And, you know, the PT is like, ah, man, that sucks. Like I thought he did everything I could in his rehab and we took four or five weeks and did all this running. And I'm like, well, did you check all the boxes that you felt like you needed to check? And he's like, yeah, I really did. So, I was like, then there's two ways we can look at this. Like one is, he hit the one out of 2000, you checked all the boxes and sometimes like things go bad and there's just reasons that we can't explain. Either we didn't measure things that we maybe could have, or maybe we didn't measure things that we knew about. Maybe there's like epistemic uncertainty or stupidity, like we just don't know. Or, you know, this guy already had the injury. He took four weeks to try and rehab it, to see if he could play, to not get a surgery. I was like, you've been doing this for a long time. Just put a probability on it. What's the probability of a guy having this injury and rehabbing and then playing healthy and not getting the surgery? He's like, oh man, 90% of the guys end up getting hurt and having to have the surgery. I'm like, so what are you beating yourself up for? Like, you're telling me that you're bummed about the 10%. I mean, let's not get crazy with this. Let's just not get upset about it and think about how we can use the information next time, going forward. And I think a job like that would be fascinating.
[00:28:18] Sam Robertson (Host): Yeah, and I'm reminded of something I'm sure I've said to yourself and maybe others before in terms of coaches and managers and most people aren't natural Bayesians aren't they? They do think binary. They do think this is a failure or a success. Yeah, I know there's director of methodology roles out there in some organisations now in sport, which are probably somewhat similar to what you're referring to now. But I do like that idea and I think it would need a lot of trust and initiative from front offices and executive teams, but I'd love to see that crop up. I know we're running short on time, so I'll let you go. but again, fascinating as always, and thanks again for joining me on the show, Patrick.
[00:28:54] Patrick Ward: Oh, thanks for having me. It was great.
(Music Interlude)
Interview Two - David Joyce
[00:29:01] Sam Robertson (Host): My next guest on the show is David Joyce. David is an internationally recognised name in elite sporting performance, strategy, and leadership, based in Sydney, Australia. He holds master's degrees in sports physiotherapy and strength and conditioning and he's just about to complete his MBA.
[00:29:16] His extensive CV in elite sport includes stints at Saracens Rugby and Western Force, in football with Blackburn Rovers and Galatasaray, Olympic cycles with Team Great Britain and Team China, and most recently in the Australian Football League as Head of Athletic Performance with the Greater Western Sydney Giants. Despite all of this, he's perhaps best known for his two best-selling books, 'High Performance Training for Sports' and 'Sports Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation'. David, thank you so much for joining me on the show.
[00:29:45] David Joyce: Thanks Sam. Thanks for having me.
[00:29:46] Sam Robertson (Host): Now, as we've just heard in my introduction, you've worked across the world in a number of different team and individual sports, but also performing a variety of roles such as physiotherapist, high performance manager, and more recently in strategic and system development and areas like coach education. Do you see all those roles continuing to exist in the future? And if so, do you see them changing dramatically in any way?
[00:30:09] David Joyce: In terms of traditional sports, there'll always be a need for physiotherapists, or like sort of disciplines, whether that's an osteopath or an athletic trainer, depending on where you are. So I think there'll always be a need for allied health. I think that's clear. I think there'll always be a need for strength and conditioning. What's interesting is the move to, and then away from, the high performance manager. So that was the role I held most recently. Traditionally it's been quite a siloed approach to support staff and performance support. So you might have a medical team and then you might have a strength and conditioning team. My philosophy has always been as a united and coherent group. And so the high performance director role actually suited me and my beliefs pretty well. It's interesting that some clubs and some sports are starting to move away from that. And I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing. It's just a thing, I suppose. But I do think there'll always be a need for someone to be there, the coherent leader or the figurehead of that, and make sure that the off-field support is joined up. So I think that will always be there. How it looks into the future, I'm not too sure.
[00:31:23] So there's a lot of talk about people becoming more generalist in their skill set, which I understand. I think what we'll see, Sam, is that there'll be a bleeding of disciplines into each other. So physiotherapists will need to know a lot more about strength and conditioning, strength and conditioners will need to know a lot more about the injuries, for example, and they'll need to base some sort of rationalisation of resources in that regard. But in terms of the high performance director, I think that person will have a skillset, will come from a particular area, but their strength or their real attribute may not necessarily be in medical or in strength and conditioning or exercise physiology. It's more likely to come in strategy and leadership and those sorts of areas as well. So, I think, we'll probably have the same job titles, but the job descriptions may in fact vary over the coming years.
[00:32:19] Sam Robertson (Host): Yeah, it's a good point that you made at the end around strategy development in that high performance director role, because as you were speaking, and also in my experience, I've noticed that obviously most of the people that end up in those roles are not trained as high performance managers, per se. They go into those roles, they’re experienced as largely a physiotherapist obviously, or sometimes from strength and conditioning, and then they have to pick up that expertise along the way. There's no formal training or degree, that I'm aware of at least, in high performance manager.
[00:32:46] And I think obviously most clubs in, at least in my experience, tend to default to the person with some medical or physiotherapy experience because that's a large part of that role normally. So is that something that we just have to accept that it's basically either experience, it's going to make someone get to the level where they're able to do that role, or is that something we could actually address at an earlier stage of people's career by actually training them now in that area? It sounds like you're advocating more for a different skill set altogether.
[00:33:15] David Joyce: I'll just push back on the thought that most high performance managers come from medical, cause I don't see that being the case. I see a lot coming from strength and conditioning and exercise physiology. I don't know what the exact split is, but it's probably, you know, closer to 50/50, I would have thought. But interestingly, I do think that the skillset of a high performance manager is really quite different from being the operational hands-on, whether it's coach or whether it is medic. So I think that people tend to get promoted to the overall director role on the basis of their seniority, their clinical skill set, or their strengths skill set. We see this across industries, that that is not a particularly good way of examining the potential of someone to be a good leader or a good manager. They are different skill sets. I do think it's helpful for the high performance manager, the high performance director, to have a particular skill set, like an operational skill set, but they must be able to speak with a level of knowledge and have informed conversations with everyone in their remit. It's like the CEO may come from finance, but they absolutely need to be able to have informal conversations with the head of marketing. So, it's exactly the same sort of thing. What's of interest is the high performance director in a lot of Olympic sports, both here in Australia and abroad, will often come from a sports management background, or have specific training in that, and they are actually quite removed from the operations side of things. Their role is much more strategic and leadership than it is operational. But just in professional sports, they don't tend to endorse that level of middle management.
[00:35:01] Sam Robertson (Host): Why do you think that is? You've worked in both, obviously.
[00:35:04] David Joyce: In professional sport there's a real, there's a premium based on individual operational skillset. The strategy windows are much shorter, so it is about winning the next game. Whereas Olympic sports, they tend to be much larger, longer operational windows that might be four years or two years or eight years or 12 years, depending on how many quads you're looking at. So that demand requires a very particular skill set that really, like, there's not many sports that look that far in the future. You could argue that the NBA probably do, with respect to their draft picks, et cetera, et cetera. But certainly in Australian sport it's very much week to week, and that's the fundamental tension that we see, is that the incentives are based towards near-term horizons, but long-term success is based upon the strategy over a number of years. And I think what you'll find is that, particularly in Australian sports, where there are strong equalisation measures, whether it is salary cap, whether it is the uneven draw, whether it is the soft cap, whether it is the draft, all those sorts of things, the clubs that outperform that are more likely going to be the ones which are strategically strong, rather than just operationally so.
[00:36:23] Sam Robertson (Host): Yeah, it's a great point and I don't think I've ever considered that before that it's intrinsically tied to the fact that they operate in four year cycles in Olympic programs, for instance, that they tend to be more strategic. I think you're totally right. And I also, in reflection right now, I think that pro sports should and could learn a lot from them. I'm not saying they do everything right either, the Olympic sports, but I think that is something that most professional sports I've seen at least would benefit from that stability, or that longer term or even medium-term planning.
[00:36:50] While we're on strategy, in my earlier conversation with Patrick, it was interesting to hear how his roles and interests have changed over his career. And based on your CV, it does look to be a similar experience for yourself. And so, for example, I know you're much more interested in sports strategy now than perhaps you were a decade ago, or you might be able to correct me if I'm wrong on that, but you're certainly involved in sports strategy now more than perhaps you were a decade ago. Why do you think that's changed? Have you just had more opportunities in that, or has that been a culmination of your interests changing as you've learned more and experienced more?
[00:37:21] David Joyce: Yeah, it's a question I've given quite a lot of thought to, Sam, as you can probably imagine and attest, I suppose. The reality is for me, I actually get a little bit bored doing the same thing all the time. You know, I actually really enjoy problem solving. The two things that I really enjoy are problem solving and developing people. The vehicle I used in the first instance was sports medicine. And then what I could see was actually that was probably a little bit limiting in terms of my own curiosity and to really improve my medical skills and my performance skills I needed to investigate much more down the strength conditioning route, because fundamentally that's what I believe in. So I sort of took a bit of a pivot and went down that route and then brought everything together as the high performance director. And what I can see with being a high performance director is that actually so much of success in this realm is dependent on your ability to lead others, to lead or to formulate and implement or operationalise the strategy. And so then that's kind of where my career has ducked into as well. It's a mixture of my own intrinsic drive to do that, but also I suppose the opportunities that I've had.
[00:38:36] And in terms of why I've transitioned out of, you know, even being a high performance director now, is that I was still being challenged, every day is a challenge, but the sort of challenges that I was seeing were the same sorts of challenges that I'd seen for a long time. And actually what I really wanted to do was scare myself and go, right well, let me take on some challenges that I've not seen before. So that's kind of been at the heart of my transition, much more into the strategic consulting space. But having said that the stuff that I'm doing is still adjacent to what I've been doing for the last 20 years. It's not as if I'm consulting to pharmaceuticals or to architecture firms. I'm still doing a lot more consulting stuff in sport. I've got that background and I can have those conversations, it's just that the sort of stuff I'm doing is much more strategic than operational and management.
[00:39:28] Sam Robertson (Host): Yeah, and on that, I'll, give you an opportunity to think about this one a little bit, about some of the most important things that you're learning as you've shifted into that role and some of the challenges that you're facing as you've moved into strategy. But also while we're talking about strategy and we mentioned short and long-term strategy before, it leads me to think another reason why it's not always picked up on by, not only sporting organisations, but any organisation and implemented particularly well is because of the way that strategy decisions are evaluated. Theoretically, right now, we've got more ways and data to evaluate strategy, outcomes, or even strategy processes, better than we've ever been able to do before. But are the KPIs right that we're using for that in sport at the moment? And maybe that's not the right question in terms of are they right or not, but can we be doing more in how we evaluate these strategies? And if we do, maybe we'll start to see them take shape and take root in some of these clubs that aren't doing this particularly well right now.
[00:40:21] David Joyce: Yeah, well, strategy for me is always about how do you achieve and maintain a competitive advantage into the future? And what are your unique skill sets? What differentiates you from your competitors? That's effectively what strategy is, and really involves sacrifice, it involves prioritising a bunch of options, some of which, many of which, may be actually really, really good, but you go, right which is the lead domino? Which is the one that I'm going to be able to make the biggest impact with? And you have to sacrifice some pretty good alternatives, but as long as it's in keeping with your strategy, which is then in keeping with your context, your mission, your vision, all those sorts of things.
[00:41:01] I'm not certain that a lot of people think about it in that sort of formal way, or through that particular framework, particularly in professional sport. Strategy is often seen in a list build, in the AFL for example. And it may also be seen in terms of how a team plays. But from an operational perspective, in terms of sports med, sport science, there's actually very little strategy. It's about, we have less soft tissue injuries this year, therefore our strategy is right. Which is, you know, it's not right. And in the same way that we had more soft tissue injuries this year, therefore we're doing something wrong. But then the window that you're examining is actually too small. So in terms of are we using the right measures? I'm not too certain, but what I am certain of is that our timeframes for measurement are too short.
[00:41:53] Sam Robertson (Host): Why is it not there? Is it because, as we talked about earlier, the individuals in these roles aren't trained in this area, or is it because they don't have time to consider strategy, or they don't think they have time, more importantly? Or is it a bit of both?
[00:42:06] David Joyce: Look, it's probably a bit of both, but ultimately it gets down to where the incentives lie. And the incentive lies on the back of winning the next game. Funnily enough, the teams that do strategy the best, well, they've got the best opportunity for strategy, are the ones that are outside the premiership window. Because they're not trying necessarily to win the next game, but they might have a longer frame in mind.
[00:42:32] Why don't we do it better? I think it gets down to the incentives. Like coaches are sacked on the basis of what they did that year. And in some instances, particularly in premier league and NFL, they're sacked on the basis of what happens in the previous four weeks. So if you've got that, it's one thing to bang on about needing a three or four year strategy, but the key decision-makers are not going to buy into it if their addiction to food, clothing and shelter, which is their pay packet, is determined on such a small window.
[00:43:04]It's a broader societal question, Sam. Like, what are the expectations of society? What are the expectations of the media? Because they're the key drivers of strategy timeframes in many professional sports.
[00:43:16]Sam Robertson (Host): It's a good point. And, I think in a lot of the topics we'll explore in the podcast we are really holding up a mirror to society and vice versa. And so much of what we see there is reflected in sport. Some of it's magnified more in sport, obviously.
[00:43:29] Just switching focus back specifically to the title of this particular episode about jobs that could disappear. I spoke to our previous guest about perhaps some jobs that could arise, some new jobs, or jobs that will become more prevalent. But I wonder whether you've got a comment or thoughts on which roles could disappear in future, or even sports. Obviously some roles are inexplicably kind of tied to certain sports. And that is obviously roles that go across the sporting landscape. But who do you fear for most in terms of sports and roles, moving forward?
[00:44:01] David Joyce: The roles that I fear for the most are the ones which are repetitive, mechanical, and liable to be overthrown by computers. And that's not just in sport, that's in society. And the people I fear for the most are the ones that are actually potentially unable to differentiate their skillset. You know, if they're just fairly bland. If they're unable to do that, what will end up happening is that there'll be a race to the bottom in terms of wage. And they're the ones that will exit the system.
[00:44:32] It's interesting, like, we look at data and I think we're going to see increasing use of that and we're seeing a lot more now than we did 10 years ago, of course. But I wonder how much of that is now going to be outsourced as well. When we talk about software, as we had software and now software as a service, I wonder if performance analysis will become performance analysis as a service, because they really can't differentiate themselves, or if they can't differentiate themselves.
[00:44:59] And then there becomes a much greater role for the strategy side of being a high performance director. Because they need to know which elements are absolutely critical, which to outsource, which not to, how to deal with different vendors. And now we're starting to see the role of the high performance manager completely depart from just someone who used to blow whistles, or strap ankles, but actually trying to look at the entire ecosystem and go, right well, it's this part we need to keep as absolutely core within the organisation, this part, however, we can outsource. And how do you outsource, how do you maintain those relationships? So that the high-performance director in the future is going to spend less time on the field and much more time in meetings and having conversations with all sorts of vendors. That's the way I see it going.
[00:45:52] Sam Robertson (Host): Yeah, I mean, I think even if you look at the most recent events around the global pandemic, now the expectation perhaps is that all the consultancies from professional clubs or the sporting organisations will disappear. And of course that hasn't happened in some organisations, some have moved those on to save money. But in some cases it's actually easier to move on whole staff, or whole loads of staff to, yeah, you're not going to be lumped with their salaries and all of the benefits that come with it, and kind of outsource that, as you mentioned, to consultants, when you need it as a service.
[00:46:22] David Joyce: I think you're right. And consultancies or consultants, if they were a luxury they will go, because everything will become more rationalised. However, the on-costs that come with employees are pretty high. And not just the actual monetary costs, but also the time costs of making sure that they're happy and healthy and all those sorts of things, which are great to do, but it is a resource. And so, if you operate a system where you can get the same or better work done through a consultant, I can see that actually taking hold quite quickly.
[00:46:57] Now, the interesting thing with doing that is that if you then have a number of consultants, you can get them competing against each other on the basis of product differentiation, or skill expertise, or price. It gives a bit more flexibility to the organisation that's going to go down that road. I don't know that everyone will, because there'll still be a premium based on someone going in and feeling part of that organisation, and rightfully so. But I do see the ecosystem just changing a little bit.
[00:47:28] Sam Robertson (Host): Yeah and, I'm not trying to create classifications here for different roles in sport, but obviously you've got very hands-on roles in sport, and physiotherapists and trainers are examples of that. And it's going to be very difficult to replace them with consultants, at least on a full-time basis, because they are needed day in, day out, in many sports. But then some of the other areas you mentioned, particularly in analysis, you can almost see that being ripe for manipulation. And really, this is where you come back to your high performance director needing to be very, very skilled in how they almost become a bit of a bullshit detector and differentiate good from bad, because it's very, very open to storytelling, isn't it? That the person that tells the best story is likely to come out on top whether or not their product's the best or not.
[00:48:11] David Joyce: Yeah I certainly don't think that's isolated to sport, Sam.
[00:48:15] Sam Robertson (Host): [Laughter] The other one you mentioned there in consultancy, which I've kind of binarised those two, but of course there's other consultants that are solely there just to disrupt. And in a sense, strategists can be part of that as well. Do you see an increased role for that and what I mean by disrupt is to come in for a couple of days here and there, or a couple of junctures per year, and almost throw everything out in the organisation. I mean, there's obviously a time and place for that in sports, and that's not a new thing, but is that more important now than ever? Or again, is that subject to the same issues we see with data, people that present the best or tell the best story are the ones that end up being successful?
[00:48:50] David Joyce: There's no doubt there's a lot of consultants that take that view and they view it as a short-term, finite game. I'm yet to see, the sort of bushfire approach, I'm yet to see that having true long-term impact, of someone coming in for a couple of weeks and telling the organisation they're doing everything wrong, all those sorts of things. You can gain some pretty quick momentum, but it's like a crash diet. The way that strategy takes hold and the way that organisations change is actually through changing the cultural soup. And more often than not, I've seen the crash and bash sort of consultant come in, create some waves, and actually probably cause a bit more resentment rather than anything, because they're in it for a short-term gain. We need to view this as an infinite, sort of iterative, project, I would have thought.
[00:49:41] Sam Robertson (Host): So just before I let you go, I know that you're passionate about developing people, particularly younger people and you mentioned that earlier. A piece of advice for them in closing, what would you be telling a student - which I'm sure you have coming to you regularly now, 18 or 19 or 20 year olds - looking to get into the high performance manager role? I certainly see a lot at the university, for example, a lot of students that tell me, "I want to be a high performance manager", which is obviously quite a broad role, as we've talked about. What would you be telling them now, knowing that the world is changing quite dramatically and the sporting world as well?
[00:50:12] David Joyce: A lot of people that come up to me and say, "I want to be a high performance manager", do so because they see that as being the pinnacle, within the sport context. There's no doubt it certainly gets paid the most, but it also comes with by far the greatest responsibility and workload. What I always try and do is draw attention to the fact that it's a big job. Like not everyone wants to be a CEO of a company, not everyone wants to be the prime minister, for good reason, you know?
[00:50:39] So I think it's incumbent on people like ourselves, Sam, to really highlight the great things and the challenges with it as well. But if someone's really bent on getting that, the things that have helped me the most is that I've been really curious, been intent on listening rather than speaking, and really trying to develop a sense of mastery. Now, mastery for me has not really come in terms of being a master sports medic, being a master strength and conditioning coach. Like there are gazillions of better physios than me, gazillions of better strength and conditioning coaches than me. Where my point of differentiation is, is that I think that what I can do is grasp pretty complex and difficult concepts and tell stories to influence people, in a positive way and looking at a systems view. Like, I think the systems view is that's what I try and differentiate myself on. That's the way I see the world.
[00:51:38] So really what I would be encouraging that person to do is to have as many conversations with as many people involved in the output of sports performance as possible. Rather than just think that say, if she comes from the realm of strength and conditioning, go right well that's your major, but go and seek minors in sports medicine and go and seek minors in nutrition and dietetics, go and seek minors in pedagogy and skill acquisition, and actually round out your skill set that way. That, to me, is what the high performance director should be doing. And then as they progress in their career, it's much more about the how to influence people, that's going to be the determinant of whether you stay at a job. So often it is your seniority and your domain that gets you the job. But it's your ability to influence people and to make really good decisions under a great deal of pressure is what keeps you in a job.
[00:52:40] Sam Robertson (Host): I think that's pretty good advice to finish on. David Joyce thank you so much for joining me on the show today.
[00:52:45] David Joyce: Great. Thanks for having me, Sam.
(Music Interlude)
Final Thoughts
[00:52:52] Sam Robertson (Host): And now, some final thoughts from me on today's question. When it comes to securing your place in the workforce, the common advice is to generate tangible value and develop a point of difference. But in sport, with a rising trend towards generalists, developing the latter is becoming harder and harder to do.
[00:53:10] On the face of it, it appears there will always be a need for certain roles, in particular, those which are athlete-facing or hands-on. But unquestionably some positions, such as performance analysts and sports scientists, are already facing threats to their very existence from automated systems and third-party service providers. At the same time, new roles have emerged - storytellers, disruptors, and even directors of methodology.
[00:53:37] Interestingly, and I can assure you that I didn't put them up to it, both guests on this episode mentioned that they detested boredom and highly valued curiosity. These words are almost antonyms. This curiosity drives an insatiable desire to be constantly learning and improving, but it's also this curiosity that can actually lead to boredom, especially when a job doesn't facilitate expanding interests or utilise new skill sets.
[00:54:02]Perhaps an open question is whether it's incumbent on organisations to accommodate these interests or whether high-performing individuals simply have a shelf life in any position they hold. But if curiosity and a keenness to learn are displayed by our best and brightest in sport, then surely these characteristics also lead to versatility and an adaptability to handle any new threats or opportunities that arise. If we're able to develop these traits, then maybe the question of whether your current job still exists in the future, may not actually matter.
[00:54:32]I'm Sam Robertson and this has been One Track Mind. Join us next episode, where we'll be asking: can sport ever really be fair?
Outro
[00:54:41] Lara Chan-Baker: One Track Mind is brought to you by Track and Victoria University. Our host is professor Sam Robertson and our producer is Lara Chan-Baker, that's me!
[00:54:52] If you care about these issues, as much as we do, please support us by subscribing, leaving a review on iTunes, and recommending the show to a friend. It only takes a minute, but it makes all the difference.
[00:55:04] If you want more where this came from, follow us on Twitter @trackvu, on Instagram @track.vu, or just head to trackvu.com - while you're there, why not sign up for our newsletter? It's a regular dose of sport science insights from our leading team of researchers, with links to further reading on each episode topic.
[00:55:24] Thank you so much for listening to One Track Mind. We will see you soon.
(Music Fade Out)
