By Bo Hanson – 4x Olympian, Coaching Consultant & Director of Athlete Assessments

Is your team missing its most important ingredient to success?

Every coach knows how important it is for their team to have total knowledge of the game plan, strategies and tactics in order to produce a successful result.  In high-performance sport, every team needs well-structured plans, and players need to know and understand these plans.  This type of knowledge is an example of what is called explicit knowledge and it can be relatively easily taught. The thing is though, relying on this type of knowledge only, will never win you the big games.  This article is about a lesser known, but far more critical type of knowledge.  A type of knowledge all the great teams have, yet may struggle to explain to you or me, if we were to ever ask the question…

The type of knowledge found to be the defining factor in successful teams and individuals from all types of endeavors is called, Tacit Knowledge.  As explained by the original definer Michael Polanyi in 1966, “We can know more than we can tell”.  Polanyi explained how knowledge can be expressed in words and numbers, but this only represents the tip of the iceberg of the entire body of possible knowledge about any given subject.  The words and numbers type of knowledge in sport is literally the game plan, tactics and basic strategies etc.  In delving deeper into the entirety of knowledge, Polanyi classified two categories.

1. Explicit Knowledge

Explicit knowledge is able to be transmitted in a formal and systematic language.  It is captured in records of the past such as libraries, archives and databases and is assessed on a sequential basis.  It can be expressed in words and numbers and shared in the form of data, scientific formulate, specifications, manuals, game plans, tactics and the like.  This kind of knowledge can be readily transmitted between individuals formally and systematically or from coach to athlete or athlete to athlete.

For example, we can look back on successful teams or athletes in any sporting code and breakdown statistics on game plans – what worked, what did not work.  We can define possession statistics, player positional roles and even physical attributes of the best players compared to those who did not make it.  We can define every step leading up to what ultimately became the winning score, but the question is, did we see this coming in real time as we observed from the side line or even as a player on the field?  Could we change the course of the game, based not on what the statistics were telling us, but another form of knowledge which is far more intuitive and not easily defined? Could this knowledge result in instinctive action which results in the game flowing in our direction.  For example, a player who runs the ball on the last play, going against the game plan or set play. This player may leave the opposition guessing as to what is happening resulting in a winning play.

Explicit knowledge can be gained by reading a book, talking to a coach or team member, or studying vigorously the intricacies of your sport.  Anyone can gain this knowledge if they want it badly enough and are prepared to do the studying, but unfortunately, this knowledge will not win you many games.  But it does form an important foundation.

2. Tacit Knowledge

This type of knowledge is highly personal and hard to formalize or define, making it difficult to communicate and share with others.  Subjective insights, intuitions and hunches fall into this category of knowledge.  It is deeply rooted in an individuals’ actions and experience as well as in the ideals, values, or emotions he or she embraces.  It is a highly personal knowledge often based on anecdotal evidence which one may not even have realized they have collected.  It ‘indwells’ in a comprehensive cognizance of the human mind and body.

The thing about sport tacit knowledge is, it deals with ‘knowledge’ that has become so thoroughly  embedded that the holders no longer ‘think’ about what they’re doing but simply ‘do’ it.  This type of knowledge not only extends to the intricacies of plays in a game, but especially of how fellow team members behave and play. Often in teams which are highly successful, players who possess sport tacit knowledge about each other’s game, know intuitively where or how to back each other up, by reading in advance what or how a team member is going to do or play.

Tacit Knowledge in Action:
Queensland’s State of Origin Team

Recently there was the final match in the annual State of Origin series here in Australia.  This is the largest football related event on our yearly calendar and has been in operation for close to 30 years. The winning team of the three game series, has been Queensland for eight straight years now.  This winning streak is extraordinary because up until the streak began, the two teams were even on all statistical measures, with neither team having won the series for more than three consecutive years.

Before the final game of this year’s series, an interview between the Queensland Team’s most capped four players (all are play makers within the team) revealed how each of these athletes history of playing together went back farther than the initial start of the eight year winning streak.  Their history began when they first walked on to a football field.  Three of the players began in under 8’s together and the fourth player began playing with the other three when he was in his early teens.  Today, these four players anticipate, predict, guide, communicate and function as team members at a level which is unprecedented in our sport.  Their total understanding of each other and each other’s game is a great example of the highest level of tacit knowledge.

What is interesting is the culture of the Queensland team has always been one of loyalty.  This has seen the team always aiming to keeping the majority of the team together from one year to the next.  Selectors have put faith in the players further strengthening the value of this culture.  Sport tacit knowledge in this case, has a chance to highly develop amongst the entire team.  The Queensland team has a culture which (whether on purpose by design or not) values sport tacit knowledge.  The opposition team is the complete opposite, changing players each year and even within the three game series in a hope to play only those players who are displaying “current form”.  The opposition team from New South Wales will also regularly play a player out of position.  Therefore removing any sport tacit knowledge about the intricacies of the position completely.

Underpinning the Queensland Team’s development of sport tacit knowledge is the fact that there is a younger player’s junior program which is lead with the same cultural identities as the senior team.  These younger players then start to develop the sport tacit knowledge of each other which one day will see them as team members in the senior team.  The opposition team has never (until last year) had a junior development team in place to underpin the senior team.  Therefore, is it any wonder one side has totally dominated the State of Origin series?

Coaching to develop Tacit Knowledge

The question for you as coach, is how to develop sport tacit knowledge and how to identify this knowledge in your players so they can be more conscious of it and hopefully pass it on to others.  As well, we need to define what this knowledge consists of as it extends to intricacies of game patterns and also the highest level of understanding each player and their individual team member personalities. The big issue is, tacit knowledge by its definition is not able to be codified.  If it can be codified, then it no longer is tacit in nature.  Some tacit knowledge can be taken from the tacit realm to the explicit realm through effective questioning, analysis and of course, one on one coaching of athletes and players.

Sport tacit knowledge includes the very important element of the different behavioral styles (AthleteDISC) of your individual athletes and also what team dynamics are at play in your team.  For many teams, this knowledge is completely tacit, in that it is not codified at all.  Yet, this is one of the most simple tacit knowledge elements to codify through the use of DISC Profiling.  Using DISC, removes the mystery surrounding the understanding of the unique behavioral styles within your team and you can grasp this information in a tangible way.

The realities of extracting and explaining other factors of tacit knowledge are extremely difficult.  For example, a footballer’s knowledge of how to weight a kick into the goal, or a baseballer’s knowledge of how to swing the ball exactly as they choose.  Or a rower’s ability to match the exact power phase of the fellow crew, and then how the crew precisely, to within a millisecond, remains in perfect timing despite their heart rate being at 185 for the entire race and their lactate levels going through the upper ceiling of human endurance.  You cannot ask these athletes to explain or teach someone how to do this.  It is something they learn through extreme practice.  Many never quite learn it and subsequently never make the Olympics or win a championship.

As a coach, a better approach to developing tacit knowledge within your team is to focus on creating an environment where tacit knowledge can grow.  Development of sport tacit knowledge involves the training of an individual’s perception in such a way that the individual and or team discovers by an effort of their own, something that we could not teach or tell them.  In this case, game simulations, match play and ensuring a percentage of your practice sessions are aligned to as close to real life situations as possible, creates an opportunity for tacit knowledge to develop.  When this is closely followed up with questioning and interactions between the coach and athletes to create a learning experience, tacit knowledge has the opportunity to develop.  (Please refer to our previous article on Learning Styles as this model forms the basis for questions which direct an athlete through the various stages of learning).

There is no doubt, tacit knowledge can represent your most significant competitive advantage.  As it is something no other team can copy.  Everything else, such as game plans, strategies, tactics, equipment and training programs are readily copied and shared throughout your competition.  The question is – What are you as coach, doing to specifically allow tacit knowledge to grow within your team?

Where to from here…

If you would like more information on Learning Styles, Team Dynamics or DISC Profiling read on now!

Resources: Polanyi, M. (1966), “The Tacit Dimension”, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

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