Suboptimise The Parts

There’s a thing in systems theory, that says you can’t optimise every part and the whole at the same time.

If you tune each piece to perfection in isolation, the whole thing gets worse

To make the system work, you have to make some of the parts deliberately worse

(For an example outside of coaching, have a look at England’s World Cup squad…)

Coaching is full of this and nobody really talks about it

The perfect plan that nobody follows will always lose to the mediocre one that they actually do.

Which is why it’s funny when you see idiots on the internet arguing about whether people should consume 2 or 2.2g.kg protein per day - while coaches are taking clients to near 1.5, seeing most of the benefits and then letting them crack on with their lives.

It’s the same with advertising that you reply within 5 minutes to client messages

It feels like elite service, but it’s also teaching your client they can’t move without you.

Sometimes a better service could be a slower reply - one that makes them stop needing you, which kind of should be the point.

I also think the same is true on automation - which is something everyone in the fitness industry talks about as if it’s an absolutely obvious thing to do - automate everything.

And you could automate everything in the journey

Have a slick nurture process from ‘interested’ to call - a polished onboarding email sequence and automated welcome box that is sent out to someone upon joining.

But optimise it all and automate it all, and you risk losing the room for the human bit - the bespoke thing you’d only send because of what you learned about them on the call, the book recommendation, the little gift you send related to a hobby they mentioned in their signup form.

The generic process is optimised locally, but globally worse.

So don’t always think ‘Have I optimised each step?’, instead ask ‘What is the whole thing actually for - and what parts am I happy to make worse to get it?’