The Viable System Model is a cybernetic approach to modelling, structuring and optimizing organizations. The VSM works especially well for professional football clubs because it makes clear how to manage the relationship between the manager of the first team and the technical or sporting director. The VSM shows that there are two main strategies in this regard. Both work but the club has to know which strategy she chooses and what the consequences of that choice are.
Cybernetic Big Five Theory is a neuroscientific theory for the Big Five. CB5T shows that people who score differently on a Big Five test also have a different brain. Taking these differences into account helps creating better teams, both within the organization as on the pitch. The failure of individual newly hired players often has to do with a mismatch in Big Five scores with other players. The same goes for the people running the club. When you want to influence the decision makers, it is important to take their Big Five scores into account.
Organizational Behaviour Management is the science of positive reinforcement to bring the best out of people. OBM shows that people do what is rewarded and refrain from doing that which is punished. Players are often rewarded no matter what and that leads to problems with players. The same goes for the decision makers in the club. They often decide in a way that promotes the change of themselves getting rewarded rather than in the best interest of the club. Depending on what kind of CB5T score people have, they react differently to different kinds of rewards. To optimize your influence within a club, it's important to learn to think in terms of positive consequences.
Subjective Bayesian statistics. The mainstream school of statistics if Frequentism, the idea that chance is the frequency of something happening with the same chance. Bayesian statistics is the alternative way of doing statistics with the idea that statistics isn't just about frequency. Instead, chance is the strength of your beliefs. Of course, a frequent experience strengthens your belief, so there is a relation between the strength of your beliefs and frequencies. As a scout, recruiter or decision maker understanding how statistics work in terms of the strength of your beliefs is very important because it is the strength of your belief that leads to a decision.
The philosopher Donald Davidson has created the Triangulation model that shows how we learn about the world, how we communicate and how we are trained. Training, communication and learnings are all quite important in football. Triangulation is an excellent tool to learn how to influence decision makers.
