At this time of year, we’re all experiencing some form of Super Bowl fever. But there’s a lot more than good football and clever commercials in store … there’s a lesson for training professionals.
Anyone who watches football on television has witnessed this familiar scene. The camera pans high above the stadium to a booth where your favorite team’s coordinators sit looking over the field and reviewing information that’s printed on a large laminate. Using a telephone they communicate what they are seeing to the coaches on the field.
The camera then pans to the field and you see the team’s head coach pacing up and down the sideline, wearing headphones and a mic, while looking at a laminate that closely resembles the one that the booth coaches were also reviewing. It’s obvious that he’s communicating with his team up in the booth. The camera pans again; this time to the field where the quarterback is looking toward the sideline at his head coach. The coach reads the play off of the laminate and shouts it into his microphone. The quarterback nods his head, letting the head coach know that he has received the message. He pulls the offense into a huddle and reads from a smaller version of the laminate that is attached to his wrist. The quarterback calmly tells the team what play they are going to run. The offense breaks from the huddle and lines up, ready to execute on the play that was communicated from the booth to the sidelines to the quarterback and finally to the entire offense.
They approach the line of scrimmage, poised to run the meticulously thought out and well-communicated play, when the unthinkable happens. The defense is lined up in a way that the team had not planned for. The quarterback realizes that if they run this play, against the defensive line-up that they are facing, the play is bound to fail. He starts to wave his arms franticly. He moves down to the right side of the line shouting that the play has changed. He repeats this proclamation on the left side of the line. The wide receivers wave their arms letting the quarterback know that they can’t hear him. He moves closer to them and uses hand signals. The receivers motion back that they understand. The quarterback returns to the center. He taps one of his linemen on the back to get his attention; when the lineman turns around the quarterback points at the defensive player that the lineman must now block. The lineman then turns to his fellow lineman and communicates the new change in blocking assignments. Lineman number two repeats the same message to lineman number three. The sequence of tapping, pointing, shouting, hand waving and talking continues until finally, the quarterback calls for the ball to be hiked. The team runs the play. When it has ended, all of the participants have just 25 seconds to repeat the entire sequence.
An offensive football play is the ultimate example of good (and sometimes bad) team communication. Strategy is set by those who have a stadium or high level view of what is happening across the landscape of the entire field. Tactics are determined by those who have a field level view of the operation. The real challenge however comes when it is time to actually execute the play. Regardless of what was communicated down and across the organization, the real decisions must be made at the point of execution. The quarterback must identify the landscape that he is facing at that moment, and quickly make a decision either to move forward with the original plan or to call an audible and change the play. If he decides the latter, he must quickly communicate this change to every member of the team. The team members must also communicate the change to each other.
To ensure that the entire team is on the same page, the quarterback must use multiple modes of communication including hand signals, shouting, pointing and taping. The members of the team have a role also. They must let the quarterback know when they don’t understand, or when they can’t hear him. If he receives feedback that he is not understood, the quarterback must continue to use different communication approaches until he receives the acknowledgement that his directions are comprehended.
The communication approach that takes place every time a football team runs a play is not much different from the communication techniques that corporate teams must use if they hope to be successful. Vision and strategy are communicated down from the corporate executives to the various levels of management in the company. Management then makes the tactical calls on how to execute these strategies. When implementing these tactics, however, the employee (who is on the field) is likely to face conditions that were not anticipated (or planned for) by the “executives in the booth.” When this happens the employee must make a decision. Does he or she just do as they were told, or do they call an audible and make adjustments? If they choose the latter, the communication approach is similar to the one used in the football scenario.
Like the quarterback waving his arms frantically, the employee must get the entire team’s attention so that everyone knows that on this project (or in this situation) the team is deviating from the original plan. Like the quarterback using hand signals, taping, shouting and pointing, she must use different modes of communication. Like the quarterback waiting to see his wide receivers acknowledge that they understand him, she must continue to communicate until she is sure that everyone has heard her and that everyone is clear about what they need to do. Once the project is complete, the team has only a short amount of time to prepare to repeat the process.
Are you ready for kick off?
