Chancellorsville

How do leaders make decisions? Are coaches (we) unbiased, driven by analytics/statistics or more intuitive/heuristic? Can we improve the process and ergo the outcome?

The question arises because we select players for a middle school team soon...and defining process matters in a selection involving emotion, meaning, relationships, and achievement. These elements correspond closely to HAPPINESS in psychology.

None of us live without bias. We can measure to a degree skill and athleticism, but to a lesser degree sum them to calculate potential absent an unmeasurable - commitment.

What does history teach us? At the 1863 battle of Chancellorsville in northern Virginia, Union general Joe Hooker faced Confederate general Robert E. Lee, with the Union army holding superior numerical and strategic positions. Simply, Hooker's forces should have won in a rout. But 'limited` by inferior numbers and information, Lee's troops won a critical battle of aggression. The battle went in unexpected fashion because of superior leadership.

Selecting middle schoolers requires projecting results with a woefully inadequate database. A few years ago, I lobbied hard for an athletic, unrefined player who became one of our most productive players. I recognize my heuristic bias (thin-slicing) with the Shaw-like (Pygmalion) vanity that we can 'coach up' that player. Regrettably, it isn't always so.

The battle isn't always to the strongest or the race to the swiftest, precisely because we cannot consistently measure the intangibles of players. Recently an observer remarked about a player in warmups and I commented that pregame efficiency doesn't translate necessarily into game performance. Conversely, while watching Mariano Rivera warm up in the bullpen one night with the Yankees leading 3-0, I saw him throw cutter after cutter on the 'black' of the plate, and knew the inevitable 1-2-3 result ahead.

The long-winded conclusion is that you must trust your process. A corrupt process produces flawed, dissatisfying results. We lack the beautifully screened auditions that allowed talent to shine increasing women's in philharmonic orchestras from 5 percent to fifty. But Melrose's volleyball process has identified and developed successful teams for over a decade. Would the architects claim perfection or infallibility? I strongly doubt it. But clear another space for a Middlesex League trophy...while the team works to continue improvement...through leadership and aggressiveness. Think Chancellorsville.