Program Entropy
The Essential Energy your program can’t live without. We are faced with choices every single day. The choices are yours. What will you decide?
Entropy refers to the amount of randomness, disorder, or uncertainty within a given system. The universe if ever expanding and that expansion brings with it more random, chaotic opportunities, even more disorder, less predictability, and more uncertainly. The idea is that the more expansive something becomes the less energy there is (the harder it is) to put it all back together again in a nice, neat, recognizable fashion. The longer we go without this input of energy, the tougher things become. This is what we would refer to as “Unfinished Business”, and we have a rule about Unfinished Business: it ALWAYS comes out, eventually. You may have gotten away with some things, even for long periods of time, but the assumptions, the relying on talent or previous systems, the unchecked maintenance, and sweeping things under the rug at some point, at some time, catches up with us. That rug will eventually be pulled back to show just how dirty things are.
When we think of this in terms of our teams or programs it’s pretty easy to think of all that can go wrong. Murphy’s Law after all states, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. The injuries, the losses, the #EssentialConversations that take place with upset players and parents over playing time, role, usage, you name it, they are coming. We all know these things are headed our way as the season approaches, and if you have years of experience under your belt, I’m betting you can guess not only what conversations you will have but when and potentially even with whom. We are all too familiar with the parent approaching immediately after a game or the late night text message/email.
Experience can be a great teacher however. We can use the lessons of the past to prepare for what may come the next time around. Each of the obstacles and bouts of adversity are hinted at by coaches as we preach to our players about “circling the wagons”, “keeping things in the locker room”, or “blocking out distractions”. There are messages of trust, values, standards, loyalty to the program, to teammates, and perhaps to the coaches themselves.
A lot of coaches think they can head off all potential headaches with a team or parent meeting at the beginning of the season and have everyone sign on the dotted line. How often have we said, “we talked about it” or “we addressed it once already”? We assume that just because it was said once or at some point in the past that that is enough to suffice. Viola! Problems solved.
But what really happens after that? Those problems, they are still there. They still show up. They still must be dealt with. Or maybe, if we keep ignoring them they will go away on their own? But how often is that the case? More likely, what we think to be a difficult conversation today, is that much more difficult the following week. That’s entropy at work. That’s the ever expanding nature of our universe becoming more and more chaotic, messy, problematic.
What our jobs as managers of teams and programs really is about is getting ahead of as much of this as we can, having the systems in already in place, doing our homework early, and finishing as much of the business as we can ahead of time. What this requires is a tremendous amount of energy. Often times energy we don’t have. So what can we do? One of the most impactful ways is to simply create more efficient use of the energy. Reducing complexity and variability, creating our Essential Philosophy, decluttering, building our inner voices to know who we are and where we want to go through the RACA pathway.
Our universe will never be set up to create more energy. It’s just not possible. Therefore we must become masters at not wasting the limited energy at our disposal. We must dominate the Unfinished Business of our day, we must understand that Murphy’s Law is a Law: what can go wrong, will. So let’s narrow the scope of what can go wrong by decreasing the potential entropy of our system, universe, program, and team. All it takes is the next best deicsion.