Coach Your Team so You Don’t Need to Call the Plays.

Football coaches send plays in to the players. Decision making is discouraged. Players are expected to execute plays and not show initiative. Sure, sometimes a quarterback calls an audible, but most of the game play is scripted by the coaching staff. Coaches call in plays. Players do as they are told.

In rugby, coaches have little impact on the play on the field. There are no time outs. There’s no television timeouts. There’s limited substitution. Players cannot just run in the game with new plays. The players decide if they are going to take a penalty kick or go for the try. Play is free flowing. The players have to recognize complicated offensive and defensive schemes, and respond to a complex environment.

Coaches have little ability to inform play. Coaches train their players and establish frameworks and expectations. They work on player conditioning, and set strategy, but ultimately, they have to trust their players to carry out the strategy.

Life doesn’t have timeouts or play clocks or substitutions. Train your people for a changing environment and trust them to carry out the strategy.