Ben Darwin is the Co-founder and General Manager of Corporate at Gain Line Analytics and in this episode we're going to take a look at what makes teams successful and stay successful.

Ben is a former Wallaby player, having played 28 test matches for Australia. He's a former coach and a performance analyst, having worked with a number of rugby teams, including a Japanese team, the NTT Shining Arcs and Suntory Sungoliath, he started Gain Line in 2013 out of a desire to introduce a greater degree of empirical analysis into professional sports. 

But his research goes broader than just sports, it also goes into the dynamics of professional teams across industries and the cultures they foster. In this podcast, we're looking at how this has implications for investment teams and also for super fund organisations.

 

Overview of Podcast with Ben Darwin, Gain Line Analytics

 

03:00 I was always interested in Australian sports punching above its weight

05:00 I realised that my efforts as a coach did not necessarily have any influence on the outcomes

08:30 We would find that teams that didn’t buy new talent and held on to the players they didn’t want did better

11:50 Attribution bias, we overly attribute performance to the individual

13:00 With cohesion, I’m trying to measure the attributes that drive people’s understanding of each other

14:00 We all misattribute what change does

18:30 When people try to make things better, they usually make things less cohesive

20:30 The dangers of growing organisations (super funds) too quickly

23:30 Growth is really hard

27:00 Cohesion is not the same as culture

37:30 Is it possible to build cohesion in a team with a high level of turnover?

44:00 The tumble down effect: one change causes more changes, which causes even more changes

48:30 Cohesion can drop 50% in a week, but it can’t grow 50% in a week. It grows maybe five per cent a year

52:00 My experience is that economies of scale are vastly overrated

1:05:00 Often we are dealing with a competent person who works in a structure that makes them look like they are incompetent

1:06:00 Building interpersonal trust is great, developing clarity is better

 

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Full Transcription of Episode 115

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