‘We have to keep on doing what we’re doing but find different ways of doing it’. The words of legendary NFL coach, Bill Belichick, eloquently sum up one of the major challenges we face as strength and conditioning coaches – balancing consistency with variation and coping with the challenges of monotony in the day-to-day training environment. So, when we are asked to list the characteristics of effective coaches, it is not surprising that the capacity to innovate is often discussed. This capacity can be particularly valuable in areas such as strength and conditioning, where options exist as to how to achieve our performance goals and where the paths to achieving these goals can be varied and circuitous. But what does ‘innovative’ actually mean? And can a misunderstanding of innovation cause us problems if being innovative becomes a goal in and of itself?

Perhaps the biggest problem we face in innovation is when we chase innovation for its own sake, rather than seeing it as a means to improve practice. It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention and indeed many a great innovation has evolved out of a need rather than as a more generic process. The fact is that the best innovation solves problems and the more we can focus on our most pressing issues, the more successful our innovative processes are likely to be.  Consequently, our search for innovation should always focus initially on an effective analysis of our current challenges and on addressing the leverage factors that will bring us the greatest benefit. Innovation can be seductive and we can easily become distracted and seduced by the process itself; however, the more robust approach to take is to focus on outcomes and whether the innovation leads to better results.

A major challenge to effective innovation is that it often results in a narrow field of focus. In strength and conditioning, innovation can quickly manifest itself in relation to products, especially technology – looking for something that will necessitate and produce big changes. Yet we must remember that this is but one area of innovation, and that innovation is never constrained to any specific area or even to any specific discipline. Interestingly, it is often a focus on process rather than product innovation that can have a bigger impact on our daily lives.

Another misconception is that innovation naturally involves something new or unique. This bias has a tendency to shape our thought processes to a point where we are always searching for revolution rather than evolution. In reality, innovation does not need to be unique: effective innovation simply has to be new to the situation in hand, and can come as much from small tweaks of familiar approaches as from radical shifts. Similarly, effective innovation is more likely to be an iterative process rather than a eureka moment and consequently is built around action. Ideas are important, but they are at their best when blended with practice and the wisdom that comes from experience – what Aristotle termed phronesis. Not everything that is old is outdated and not everything that is new glitters: looking at what solutions have been successful elsewhere can be especially enlightening. In this iterative process, tweaking, tinkering, mixing and matching can be powerful, viewing each iteration as a prototype not a rigid or finished solution. Each innovation solves a specific problem and progressively adds to the coach’s toolkit, providing options that can be applied as and when needed, rather than something to be used all the time. 

Perhaps then, effective innovation is as much a mindset as a deliberate action, one that emanates from contrarian thinking and curiosity. Constructive questioning is often the starting point for innovation: Why is this as it is? Could we change the way we deliver X? How effective is our communication? During this iterative process we often make the small tweaks that over time really do revolutionise our practice. Interestingly, one of the biggest benefits of this type of thinking is the identification of critical problems, and it is here that the focus on processes as well as products is especially crucial. Indeed, asking the right or better questions is often as important as focusing simply on solutions and must always be seen as a critical part of any innovative process. Innovation is ultimately about applying the right idea, in the right place, at the right time, to solve specific challenges. It must never be seen as a concept, but as a series of actions: in the words of the economist Theodore Levitt: ‘creativity is thinking up new things, innovation is doing them’.