Changing The Game: How Specialising Can Make You Worse

In the beginning, so the story goes, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep. 

And then there was light.

And the light separated from the darkness and we all fell in love with order. A place for everything and everything has its place. 

This idea was also absorbed by my beloved basketball. Each of the five players on the court had different roles and therefore different skill requirements. 

There are five players on at any one time. Generally, the shortest player is the point guard. The person who dribbles the ball up the court and stays further away from the hoop, ranging to the centre, who barely dribbles the ball and is often near the hoop. 

The other three players typically ascend in height from the smaller shooting guard through to the small forward, and finally the taller power forward. 

The wisdom of the time was that only certain players should shoot from specific locations. Everything was tightly defined. It was an idea of micro-optimisation. The taller guy might be slightly worse at dribbling than the shorter guy so never let the tall guy dribble and then over time the shorter guy would get slightly better at dribbling while the tall guy would never get any better. 

This divergence of skill would, with cyclic logic, confirm that tall players shouldn’t dribble because they are worse at dribbling. And the same thought process would apply to all aspects of the game. 

Certain players would spend their time in particular areas and would get slightly better at those skills. Shooting from various distances, passing, defence, etc. 

All of this was to optimise the skill of a particular person doing a specific part of the game. 

And it makes sense if you look at it from a superficial level. Get the person who is better at the thing to do the thing more. Micro-optimising is the key to the game, reducing down all of the player’s contributions to easily viewed elements of the game. 

Given this information, you would assume that over time, the game of basketball, and the players that make up the game would become hyper-specialized and ultra-focused on only a certain number of the numerous skills a basketball player requires. 

And you would be completely wrong. 

This is not what has happened.

Players now aren’t defined by the position, you need to be a basketball player first, someone who can dribble, shoot, pass, and play defence. If you can’t do these things you become a liability and it is now the rare case that someone is super specialised at the expense of another skill.

Game Time Baby

The reason why specialising in certain skills at the expense of being an overall complete player is that even though the positions of basketball are quite well defined, the game itself is free-flowing.

The point guard doesn’t always bring the ball up, nor do they always stay away from the hoop. The taller guys will sometimes dribble and need to shoot from further away.

Also, because of the dynamic nature, even though there is a desire to pigeonhole players into nicely defined roles, the reality is a very different beast.

The theory doesn’t capture the value added when players do things outside of their imposed roles. Nor does it capture the value lost when players don’t have a level of competency doing things that are useful for the teams success.

On top of this, as basketball has transitioned away from the static roles to the modern game. all of the stats have gotten better. People are better at dribbling. Shooting has increased and shooting from further away, specifically three-point shooting has improved.

It Is Always More Than One Thing

So what does the move away from micro-optimising creating a macro-improvement tell us?

It is never just one thing and people can do more than what we think.

Because everyone had to be able to do more in basketball, it then made everyone have to get better as the teams became more sophisticated in attacking the weak points of players and teams.

Reducing the specialisation and improving the core competency across the board has created a much more skilled basketballer. Expanding the idea of what position does based on the reality of the game rather than the desire of what was first intended has created a much better player.

Defining roles and people into very limiting ideas of what they do at work never captures all of their value. When you turn a role or a person into an accounting entry that you are trying to optimise for you have to be careful that this decision doesn’t have dire long-term consequences.

What if you are wrong about how you have codified this role? What if you are wrong about what the role actually does? What if you are wrong about what value they create? What if you are wrong about what the actual skills are that are required to be an impactful team member? What if it is a combination of skills over a number of people that is actually important?

The what-ifs can go on forever.

When you are trying to optimise a number, usually money because it is easy to understand but usually tells you nothing, it can lead to worse overall performance.

You will find that your team is a 1950’s basketball team getting destroyed by a 2020s modern team.