![]() ![]() In this case, perhaps the blinkered thinking comes from the word “kick-off”. Because we just cannot get outside that box! everyone sees the problem, everyone agrees that we need a better solution - but still the problem goes un-addressed, year after year. So I find this particular example enlightening because it is so crystal clear. How much innovation potential still goes to waste because our minds are blinkered, we’re so focused on what we’ve seen and done in the past that we don’t realise how many unnecessary limits we’re putting on our thinking? We innovators like to imagine that people who think like this don’t survive long in business, because their competition will innovate even if they don’t - unfortunately many find their way to positions of sufficient influence that they are difficult to dislodge. We've all worked with people like that, even if these are dramatic, unrealistic examples. Or an engineer who assumed that the only way to make a product was to throw everything into a reactor and mix it. Imagine a marketing executive who built a marketing plan for a new product exclusively around TV-advertising. Inside-the-box thinking occurs when we make unnecessary assumptions, put limits on our innovation that aren't really there. But it's frustrating when their suffering could so easily have been avoided by just a little more open-mindedness, outside-the-box thinking. It's a pity when a player or a team suffers as a result of something that cannot be prevented. Sunday's game was almost (but not quite) as painful for innovators as it must have been for long-suffering Buffalo fans. Or more precisely, rules-committees are, because coaches and trainers are some of the greatest innovators in any field. Well, because sports is one of the last bastions of inside-the-box thinking. 34%, with 5% ties), so reducing this 76% difference to a 41% difference feels like progress.īut why didn’t they just reduce it to 0%? In the playoffs it has been worse, with the team who wins the toss winning 10 times out of 11 since the new rules came into play.Īnd yes, it’s true that the old scheme was worse – previously the team that won the coin-toss had almost double the chance of winning (about 60% vs. ![]() Statistically, under the new, improved, fairer rules, the team who wins the toss has been 41% more likely to win the game than the team who loses. So what we saw on Sunday is the improved version !! In 2010 they ran an extensive consultation process with all the teams and officials to try to find a fairer way. You might naively imagine that it’s the way it is because they’ve always done it that way. I’m not saying that this particular idea is the best way to decide how to start overtime, but it is undeniably better than the way they currently do it. We don’t know who would have won under those circumstances, because Mahomes is not of this planet but the 12-yard-line is not a good place to start a drive … but neither team could argue afterwards that they were denied by the cruelty of a coin-flip.Īnd of course the analysts and Monday-morning quarterbacks would have a field day using their flawless 20/20 hindsight to criticise the strategic incompetence of whichever coach ended up losing – all part of the fun of a NFL play-off weekend! In other words, given that the ball is placed on the 12-yard-line, BOTH teams agree that they would prefer Kansas City to start with the ball. If they had written 20 instead, Buffalo would have got the ball, on their 16 yard line.īy writing 12, Kansas are saying “we believe our offence is so good right now, that we would rather take the ball on our 12-yard-line than let Buffalo have it.” By writing the number 16, Buffalo is saying: “we’d rather let Kansas have the ball within their 15-yard-line than take it ourselves on our 15-yard line.” So they get the ball … but they get the ball on their own 12-yard line. Then, at the centre of the field, under the eyes of the teams and the fans and the TV camera, the referee opens the two envelopes. Now imagine an alternative scenario, more dramatic, more strategic and, most importantly, extremely fair:Īfter the game ends tied, the head-coaches each write down a number, put it in a sealed envelope and hand it to the referee. It wasn’t quite that simple, but winning the coin-flip was a huge factor. ![]() After possibly the most dramatic, exciting, incredible ending ever to an NFL play-off game, a game full of creative flair and innovative plays, the teams finished tied.Īnd then they flipped a coin, and the team the won the coin-flip advanced. Last Sunday we saw a wonderful, painful example of thinking inside the box. ![]()
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