Behind the Laptop Week 6
Collaborating across campus
If you’re interested in watching any of our matches, all of them are on ESPN+
Thursday 10/3
It’s match day again, we’ll be facing off against Kansas tonight. It seems that Thursdays are good days for me to write, since all the weekly preparations are done and there’s a few hours left for reflection before we start the cycle of playing, reviewing, and prepping all over again.
As I mentioned in my week 1-2 post, I’ve been having lunch discussions with a CU professor about topics in game theory and how they can be applied to volleyball. We had lunch again this week and we had another really thought-provoking and productive discussion. In a way, I keep giving myself homework so that I can come back to him with new things I’ve learned so he can help me better understand those concepts and we can discuss how those ideas might translate to sport. Since our last meeting, I finished another nontechnical introductory game theory book so I had a short list of topics to ask him about. He’s very helpful in translating dry, academic textbook examples into more sport-related ideas. Towards the end of our time, we hit on some ideas that I can turn into actual studies, using data I’ve gathered as a performance analyst. To do that, I’ll likely rely on help from another area on campus.
Later in that same week 1-2 post, I also mentioned that I had a pitch meeting with a data science class. Since then, I had a group of three students choose to work on the project I proposed and we’ve had a few meetings to discuss their progress and answer their questions about the data as well as about how volleyball works. I met with them again today, so collaboration continues to be on my mind. While they get some experience working with real data on a real research project, I get to learn little bits of data science from them. I’m always interested in how they frame problems and which tools they use to solve them. They approach problems differently than coaches do so I can learn from their perspectives.
The larger point for me in these two examples is the value of collaborating with others, particularly those in other areas of expertise. It’s easy to silo yourself into just your team, or your athletic department, or your sport. There’s certainly value in collaborating with others in your office or in your circle of friends but I have found some great opportunities to stretch myself by reaching out to others I can learn from in different fields. As I said above, they approach problems differently and there’s much to be gained from that difference.
The first challenge to collaboration is finding others to collaborate with. For me, the connections I’ve made across campus are products of me seeking to learn things on my own and rapidly hitting my comfort limits. My involvement with the data science students began when I was trying to learn R. At some point, I saw an email about events on campus that included a workshop series in R, so I signed up and learned more about R as well as learning about a department on campus that specializes in collaborating with other areas on campus around data science. Meeting the professor was a product of reading some popular science-type game theory books, which led to trying to read some introductory texts on the topic and struggling immensely with the notation commonly used. I searched the university’s course catalog for classes that covered probability, statistics, and (hopefully) game theory). I then sent emails to two of the professors I found. Both of them were helpful but only one of them was currently teaching on campus so that’s how we ended up having lunch together.
Both of those stories bring up the second challenge in collaborating, doing my part. In both cases, I’m asking my collaborators to do something for me and I don’t really have something to offer in return. The least I can do is show them my commitment and openness to learning from them. When the professor and I go to lunch, I’ll pick up the tab because he’s doing me the favor of sharing his expertise. But, maybe more importantly, I’ll come with things I’ve learned (or tried to learn) so it feels like conversation instead of a one-student lecture section. I think it’s important that both sides are getting something out of the collaboration, even if, in the case of the data science students, what they’re getting is class credit and, maybe, some real-world experience.
The last challenge in collaborating is one that I think affects how it is approached, the need to overcome imposter syndrome. It can be hard to put yourself into a situation where you don’t know as much as the people you’re working with. As coaches, you spend a lot of your time as the expert in the room so it can be really uncomfortable to have those tables turned on you. To me, part of being an expert is recognizing the boundaries of my expertise. After that recognition, I can find places where my expertise and areas of interest overlap with others. I’ve already determined where my limits are and I’m okay with admitting those limits to others. But it’s that willingness to overcome your ego that might be harder than the other two challenges.
I have found the rewards of collaborating to far outweigh the risks and discomforts of collaborating. While it can feel like there’s no end to what you can learn from others in the same area of expertise as you, there’s also no end to what you can learn from people in other areas as well. You can read books that business and sports leaders have written and I continue to expand my thinking in that way. But I have also found that there’s no substitute for actual collaboration. My own expertise is better for it.