Complexity, in plain words

Complex and complicated are not the same thing. And I think that distinction is worth being clear about. A complicated problem has many parts, but the parts can be analysed, and when you have analysed them, you can say with reasonable confidence what will happen if you change one. Once you have found a solution to a complicated problem you can be fairly certain that the same solution is going to give you more or less the same outcome next time around. A complex problem, however, is another animal. The parts depend on each other, the connections aren’t linear, and some of what matters you will not see until you run into it. I’d argue that most of what we are dealing with in high-performance sport is complex, not complicated. A match is complex, because the opponent is thinking too. So is a player, and so is a dressing room in the fourth week of a bad run.

Most of the things I can’t stand come from mixing these up. The slogan treats a complex thing as if it were simple. The belief that enough analysis will eventually solve what is truly complex sends very capable people off working very hard on the wrong problem. And language that is more complicated than the idea needs is mostly a way of sounding clever. So I try to match the method to the problem, and then say it in words a player can use at the pace of the game. Say it as simply as it can be said, and no simpler. That is most of the craft.

Why does language come first?

Because it is the cheapest tool a coach has, and the one most carelessly used. A team is a group of people trying to see the same thing at the same moment, and they can only do that if they describe it the same way. So I spend more time on words than most people expect: a name for a situation everyone recognises, one word that calls up a whole picture so nobody needs a speech in the middle of a match. A common language where we speak in images.

It matters most in a squad where the players come from different places, and the trap there is rarely the obviously foreign. It is the almost familiar, the same word, used in good faith on both sides, meaning something slightly different to each. The philosophy can travel anywhere. The wording has to be rebuilt for the people in front of you. And I hold myself to a test: if I can’t explain a tactical idea in words a player can use at the pace of the game, I haven’t finished thinking about it.

Where does growth come from?

Most coaches look first at what they can see: the technique, the system, the conditioning. I work on all of those. But performance is the visible end of a long chain, and the links that break are often a long way from the court. A player who doesn’t feel he belongs. A staff pulling in two directions. A club where the sporting side and the rest of the organisation want different things. A life outside handball quietly coming apart. None of it shows up in the video, and all of it shows up in a match. Because a team is complex, nothing in it happens in isolation. Everything is connected to everything, on the court and off it, and that gives me a wider map of where growth can come from, and more places to look when the obvious ones are used up.

It starts with curiosity about the people. I was never a good enough player to coach from my memory of what it felt like, so I had to ask, and asking has stayed my first tool. What does this player see? What does he want, and what is he afraid of? Where is he now, and where does he think he is going? That is also what I mean by leading with empathy. It is not the opposite of high standards. I ask a lot of people, and I can only do that honestly if I have tried to understand what it costs them.

On the part of the work you can see, I don’t believe in one method. I believe in effect. A drill is worth exactly what it does for this player, at this stage, in this team, and in a complex system you can’t know that in advance, so every drill is a small experiment: try it, watch what it does, adjust. That is why I carry a big toolbox and distrust people who own one tool. If I have to compress it, it is the phrase I keep coming back to, repetitions without repeating: enough repetition on the things that matter for them to become reliable, and enough variation that they never go stale and still hold when the game does something unexpected. Copy-paste produces players who are good at the exercise.

The same goes for how we play, which I build with the players rather than for them: a structure with room inside it, not a template. How much room depends on the group, their level, their experience, the culture they grew up in. Too little and you get people waiting to be told. Too much and people feel left alone with it. It is the easiest thing in the job to misjudge.

What gets built first?

The first mistake a new coach makes is wanting to be seen changing things. I have been that coach: arriving with a finished way of doing things and installing it as fast as the players would let me, partly because it was good and, if I’m honest, partly because I wanted it to be mine. Today I do almost the opposite. I find out what is already strong and build on it. A few things go in on day one, and they are not up for discussion. Everything else is nudges. A culture isn’t built by announcement. It is built by a hundred small corrections nobody remembers making, and then one day the room is different.

The one thing I won’t move on is excuses. Standards can flex with the group. Responsibility can’t. Take it, on the court and off it. It is the most demanding thing I ask of anyone, myself included, and I know it is where most of my friction with players begins. I would rather have that conversation early than watch it arrive late.

Where does my own energy go? I enjoy working with competent and motivated people who bring something to the table and add value to the project. And I make sure to give them real ownership of the things they are good at. Both because I want all of us to grow and improve, and because I think it is healthy for players to hear credible voices other than mine during the week. I try to focus as much of my own time as possible on the complex part, the people, the culture, the environment around them.

And when it gets messy?

It does. Every season. Form dips, injuries, a bad month, a run of results nobody can explain. I used to think of the coach’s job as solving that. I now think of it as living in it, because in a complex system the mess is not a malfunction waiting for a fix. It is the working condition. What helps is to keep a few principles fixed so people have something to stand on, make small moves, read what comes back, and adjust. It suits me better than I expected. I am patient, I am persistent, I don’t panic, and I find complexity and uncertainty more interesting than threatening.

It has a cost, and I would rather name it. The same instinct that keeps me away from easy answers sometimes costs me the room. I go deep. For people who share my ambition, that depth tends to be why they trust me. For people who don’t, it is heavy, and I understand why some of them call me rigid and demanding. Some of that is simply the price of having standards, and I have accepted that I am an acquired taste.

There is also a standard in this text that I don’t always meet myself. Saying things as simply as they can be said is easy to write and hard to do, especially when time is short and the pressure is high. I am still working on it. A coach isn’t outside the system he is trying to lead. He is one of its moving parts, and he is still learning too. Thirty years in, I still expect to be better at this in five years than I am today.

The work is complex. The way we talk about it doesn’t have to be.