The Perfect System 2: Risk Reduction

I have one earlier post about how a perfect system should be flexible. Here's an expansion of that idea.

What I meant to say there was that when running very well a human system should run on the gut feel of the human beings involved and not on pre-determined procedures. So, the Brazilians that I had talked about earlier, when playing very well, do not bother about any theory of football and move on the pitch as they feel like without any apparent structure. Yet, they seem to be playing very well.

What happens when the gut feel goes away, however, is that they have no idea of what they should do. The same used to apply to Real Madrid also. They'll just go about listlessly playing very obvious moves and end up having their passes intercepted plus a goal or two in the back of their net.

Now, I would like to find a middle point.

What should ideally be done is to play without structure when your gut feel is strong. After the playing, have someone analyse why and how it worked. So now you have an idea of precisely what worked for you when you were playing well. This is what I would like to call the thought structure. Now, when the gut feel goes away, you play according to your thought structure. Just stick to your thought structure and keep playing. You won't play as well, but atleast you won't be as miserable as you were without it. When the feel comes back, you're back.

What we've done is covered the vulnerable underbelly of our 'perfect' system.