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A Decision/Action Model for Soccer – Pt. 13The physiology of decisions, actions, learning and memory

Deep Stories, enacting a spiral curriculum

“This is how the remembering self works: it composes stories and keeps them for future reference.” [17]

Daniel Kahneman

“ Language is a screen through which we express and perceive meaning… English is an adjectival language, and for this reason, a difficult language in which to portray action happening. This is, in part, why it becomes important to tell the story of action, in the story form, permitting the unfolding experience of action.” [24]

Marianne Paget

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Decision-making is embedded in a storyYou can’t see a decision, only the story that’s left behind

“Recall that mental models are constructs that represent our understanding of classes of situations that are more similar than not. Deep stories, by contrast, are enactments that create sui generis mental models applying only to one significant new situation. Simple enactments can unfold on the basis of existingmental models. Deep stories, however, would be impossible without narrative rationality. They require us to continuously improvise the background story while acting. This means constructing the mental model as the enactment unfolds (learning in the most general sense.) [27]

“The significance and uniqueness of an enactment depend on your role in it. A priest may conduct hundreds of weddings, and to him, wedding might be a routine enactment… From the point of view of the bride and groom, the wedding may be a deep story…” [27]

“A story is about significant events and memorable moments… and the ending often defines its character.” [17]

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“We will adopt the Double Freytag triangle as our canonical example of the structure of a deep story.” [27]

“The Double Freytag triangle represents a tractable level of complexity. It is neither as simple as the basic Freytag triangle, nor as arbitrarily complex as models of individual deep stories can get (which need only begin and end with a liminal passage.” [27]

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Double Freytag – Liminal PassagesThe bookends to change

“The bookend liminal passages… are the most important elements of the Double Freytag Triangle… Between the initial and final liminal passages, doctrines and self-archetypes evolve.” [27]

“During liminal passages, we are caught in the situational emptiness between rich narrative contexts, so the only thing we can do is indulge in existential musing. The musing can be either pleasurable or painful, and you can engage in it in either self-aware or self-indulgent ways.” [27]

Liminal passages are the safe, comfortable stillness of personal narratives. The area where being in a groove can become stuck in a rut. While life goes on around us nothing new engages us. Routines dominate and normalcy dictates our lives.

The difference between the liminal passages are what’s between them, how it’s used and retained. These become the stories and heuristics kept for future reference.

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Double Freytag – Opening Liminal PassageGiving way to suspicion, getting out of the rut

“When this orderly (and pleasant) state is reached the concept becomes a coherent pattern of ideas and interactions that can be used to describe some aspect of observed reality. As a consequence, there is little or no further appeal to alternative ideas and interactions in an effort to either expand, complete, or modify the concept . Instead, the effort turned inward towards fine tuning the ideas and interactions in order to improve generality and produce a more precise match of the conceptual pattern with reality.Toward this end, the concept—and its internal workings—is tested and against observed phenomena over and over again in many different and subtle ways. [7]

Such a repeated and inward-oriented effort to explain increasingly more subtle aspects of reality suggests the disturbing idea that perhaps, at some point, ambiguities, uncertainties, anomalies, or apparent inconsistencies may emerge to stifle a more general and precise match-up of concept with observed reality.” [7]

Suspicion, an emotional gut feeling initiates the decision to begin searching the environment for ‘something else, something new.’ Exploration begins when we sensethat our goals will be soon be violated.

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Double Freytag – ExplorationClimbing a hill in search of something

“We’ve identified learning, in the most general sense, as the process of constructing a mental model from scratch. This process is open-ended and has no goals beyond hardwired biological ones. It is unsupervised, uncertain, unbounded, unstructured and mostly unrewarding.” [27]

“Given these characteristics, it should not be surprising that it is a very disorienting and stressful phase in a deep story… This is the ‘blooming buzzing confusion’ that William James speculated.” [27]

“All such natural exploration behaviors are varieties of random behaviors… The inherent open-ended randomness of all exploratory behaviors leads to randomness in what is discovered.” [27]

Exploration is a response to a feeling ofunease or curiosity, the ‘blooming buzzing confusion’ has our attention. It’s leads to a myriad of decisions andactions about what to search for and where to look. But this constant searching can’t go on for long. Exploration needs a stopping rule.

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Double Freytag – The Cheap TrickFinding the leverage point – something to work with

“The moment occurs when you recognize an exploitable pattern in the raw material you have collected in your exploration. The immediate consequence of this recognition is drawing of a relevance boundary. Things that conform to the pattern are deemed relevant and included in the mental model. Things that don’t conform are excluded. The unexplained chaos in your head separates into exploitable meaning and ignorable noise… This information is necessarily local in space and time… There is no known systemic method for triggering a cheap trick.” [27]

“Every such insight is flawed, since it is based on excluding some part of reality as noise. This will eventually catch up with you, so the insight merely buys you a certain amount of time.” [27] The danger, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” H.L. Mencken

The cheap trick is the ‘ah-ha’ or ‘oh sh_t’moment when the data becomesinformation, you found the differencethat makes a difference, an idea is born.

But “Timing is critical.” [27] If you stop exploration too early or too late “youwill fall victim to either expediency orperfectionism… the narrative-rationaldecision-maker looks for steals andbargains.” [27] Close enough will do.

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Double Freytag – Sense-makingAt last there’s something that makes sense

“A cheap trick is not just an exploitable insight, it is an organizing insight. It serves as a speck of dust… It allows you to make sense of what you’ve learned.” [27]

“This is why ‘most compelling (comprehensive) and elegant (compact) story’ is the guiding heuristic in narrative-rational decision-making. This compression and compaction creates a mental model where the pieces fit together in a meaningful way…” [27] It’s a starting point, “a cleavage term.” [25]

“Sensemaking involves the ongoing retrospective development of plausible images that rationalize what people are doing. Viewed as a significant process of organizing, sense-making unfolds as a sequence in which people concerned with identity in the social context of other actors engage ongoing circumstances from which they extract cues and make plausible sense retrospectively, while enacting more or less order into those ongoing circumstances.” [33, 34]

“Elegant and compelling, however, do not add up to real… Your mental model has not yet weathered an encounter with new realities” [27]

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Double Freytag – The Valley“Charging ahead in the dark.” [27]

“In the valley, you encounter diminishing returns from the organizing capacity of the cheap trick. As the leverage provided by the cheap trick is exhausted, the enactment requires increasing amounts of raw energy. You are sustained only by the belief that you are cheating nature on a grander scale.” [27]

“The characteristic feature of the valley is decisive action without either reward or validation.” [27]

“The valley is the longest and most difficult phase of a deep story, but curiously, it is hard to say anything about it… In movies about underdogs winning sporting contests, this is the part that screenwriters skip over lightly, with the help of a montage set to inspirational music.” [27]

The plan is coming together but has yet to be tested against the world.Optimism and ignorance keep the project going. The past is based on the cheap trick and the future on timing and opportunity. All this is played out against a running clock, declining energy and increased waste.

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Double Freytag – The Heavy Lift“We exit the valley with a massive effort of will: the heavy lift” [27]

“If you’ve ever pulled an all-nighter to finish a major project… despite doubts, to launch the product of your efforts into the wider world, you’ve experienced the heavy lift.” [27]

“A heavy lift is always required in a deep story… the do or die of the effort is what makes it a deadline. In any consequential situation, the decision to start a heavy lift is deliberate, not forced.” [27]

“Like all mental models, the mental model created by the deep story is unstable. It starts to disintegrate in the absence of a continuous stream of reinforcement through situational feedback.” [27]

The model is finally exposed to theenvironment. Friction modifies it from its pure, theoretical tenets to a constrained reality. Optimism and ignorance are tempered by experience and feedback. The opponents opposition and teammates buy in play a large role in the finished product. Finally, as you pay more attention to what you’re doing serial processing increases the demand for energy. [12,23]

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Double Freytag – The Separation Event“The externalized mental model is an organic entity…” [27]

“The separation event is the moment when a significant proportion of the newly created mental model, along with its momentum, is externalized into the environment, as your act of creative destruction.” [7,27]

“It is no longer entirely within your control… This moment is commonly referred to as the moment of truth, since it typically either validates or invalidates the assumptions underlying… the valley and heavy lift.” [27]

“Besides being a major and irreversible encounter with reality, the separation event involves a parting of ways… Through externalization, a part of the mental model…becomes codified and embedded into a reality upon which others will… imbue with their own meanings. Beyond the separationevent, we can only choose to participatein the construction of shared mentalmodels.” [27]

The action is now a part others experience and new information. Your private thoughts become part of the public domain. Your control over your own creation rapidly fades

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Double Freytag – The RetrospectiveThe road from participation to reification

“In this phase, the decision-maker’s doctrine is… revised, to reflect the morals of the deep story just experienced. The deep story itself, as a memory, is cast into its final stable form, in a way that validates the revised doctrine.” [27]

“Since we rewrite history to support this expedient doctrine, retrospectives can lead to delusions as easily as… to wisdom.” [27]

“The retrospective is not the same as a… debrief or assessment that might follow the accomplishment of (an)… objective. It is the psychological consequence of either success or failure…” [27]

At last the action has been vetted against the environment. It’s now ready to become a new memory, onethat carries what Rinus Michels calls “emotional ballast”. It sinks into history and becomes one more stored mental model that you have to draw from for future efforts. Participation passes into reification.

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Double Freytag – Closing Liminal Passage“As the retrospective tapers off, once again we enter a liminal passage” [27]

“With the benefit of hindsight, the stable memory of the deep story, as well as a revised doctrine and self-archetype take shape during the retrospective. Whether your reconstructed memories are delusions or critical histories depends on your capacity for honest introspection.” [27]

“Talk is intrinsically problematic because the reconstruction of… activity in retrospect…begins with the result that is now known, and it is shaped by that knowing.” [24]

The difference between the opening and closing liminal passages of the deep story represent a “sui generis mental model.” [27] The change in elevation between the liminal passages (double arrow) is due largely to the value of the deep story. Stress and tension play a role in the value. Not enough, it’s boring. Too much, it’s overwhelming. Managing this part of player education is a coaching art. It requires good fingerspitzengefühl i.e. expertise in leadership and management.

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Freytag Staircase, accumulating experience“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end” Dan Wilson, Closing Time

“Freytag Staircase: A view [of] a life narrative as a string of deep stories, with each successive liminal passage being, on average, a little higher than the previous one. The difference between the initial and final liminal passages in a deep story embedded within the staircase can be interpreted equally well as doctrinal growth, or decay.”[http://www.tempobook.com/glossary/#freytag-staircase]

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Freytag Staircase, accumulating experience“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end” Dan Wilson, Closing Time

Some deep stories contribute to a broadening of experience (learning) while others invalidate previous convictions and doctrines (unlearning). The later is usually disturbing because it creates a conceptual hole where a model once was. That loss may not be filled until a new deep story has been enacted.

The Freytag staircase handles the many personal identities that contribute to experience and memory. Calculative developmental, i.e. closed system models, ignore these or treat them as little more than inconveniences. The straight line to an optimized goal reflects the path that teaching curriculums imagine the student will take. The messy path and uncertain end of the Freytag staircase reflects life as it actually unfolds. Friction, chance and luck produce anomalies in both the process and product of growth and development.

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The older you get, the fewer Deep Stories you writeFatigue sets in and doctrine becomes dogma

“In open worlds, understanding is a live, ongoing battle… this ongoing understanding of the world… weakens over time for any decision-maker with finite capabilities. As we age, we become more doctrinaire and less capable of open-world learning. Narrative-rational decision-makers necessarily age over time.” [27]

The older we get the more we come to rely on routines. We can begin to live our lives in a liminal passage rut. Anomalies outside of the norm are missed or dismissed. The energy to explore the “blooming buzzing confusion” isn’t available or we rationalize the need away through some previous bias. We’ve ‘seen it all’ and become prisoners of either System 1, peer pressure - the moral/social system, lethergy or apathy.

The construction of Deep Stories requires hard work from System 2. If it’s not engaged, we may stay stuck in a liminal passage. When that happens growth, learning and development are stifled, even stopped. Even in a short run this can have disastrous consequences. [17]

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How long does it take to live a Deep Story?Wag Dodge and twelve minutes [22,28,32,33]

“The Freytag staircase helps us to think about cradle-to-grave life narratives.” [27] But for the practical purposes of learning we need shorter time-scales. The 1949 Mann Gulch Fire provides a lesson in how rapidly deep stories can be enacted. [22,28,32,33]

At 5:45 Dodge turns the crew around and they start back up the gulch. He is still in his opening liminal passage. We have a problem and routine procedure is the best option at this time.As he moves back up the gulch he becomes suspicious, the fire is gaining and the current procedure might not get the desired result, safety for himself and his crew. As he walks he begins to explore other conceptual and environmental options.At 5:53 Dodge departs from procedure, orders the crew to drop their packs, tools and to pick up the pace. Suspicion begins to overwhelm the opening liminal passage. Exploration takes on greater urgency, for some it becomes desperation and panic. A false cheap trick is enacted.At 5:55 Dodge finds another cheap trick, the fire triangle and makes sense of the situation, remove a corner. It’s a gamble but the environment is right. He sets the escape fire, a novel semi-autonomous action. He has less then sixty seconds in the valley before the heavy lift when he enters the ‘black,’ and the fire reaches his position.AT 5:57 the fire has passed Dodge but caught thirteen members of his crew, the separation event. Dodge never fully gets through the retrospective. The Forest Service however, quickly realizes the product of Dodge’s deep story at the global level. They institutionalize “escape fires/create the black” as a matter of procedure.Deep stories help to explain how new archetypes are created but do little to shed light on how, when or where decisions have been rendered. Furthermore, they require time-scales long enough to enact the story, something incompatible with adversarial decision-making i.e. 1v1. These aspects are covered by the shorter time-scales of OODA, LIDA cycles and loops.

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OODA’s and LIDA’s, the circulatory system in Deep StoriesBlood, OODA’s, LIDA’s – connective tissues for feed forward and feedback

The OODA and LIDA models are based on models of human cognition. The quotes concern the LIDA model and the comparisons are mine. Concerning input, time-scales and output I consider the OODA and LIDA models to be identical due to the genetic constraints of both.

“We propose that human cognition consists of cascading cycles of recurring brain events. Each cognitive cycle senses the current situation, interprets it with reference to ongoing goals, and then selects an internal or external action in response… One cognitive cycle would therefore take 260–390 ms.” [2,12,23]

“Conscious events occur as a sequence of discrete, coherent episodes separated by quite short periods of no conscious content.” “In the LIDA model, single conscious episodes are discrete but…not necessarily distinct – a current conscious ‘moment’ can contain percepts from a previous moment.” [2,12,23]

The carry over of percepts allows two or more cycles to combine into a coherent idea over longer times; continuity is maintained. [2,12,23] This allows more robust conceptual models to be built by combining cycles and loops together.

This model does have its upper temporal and information carrying limits. Entropy incurred in the processing of these cycles and loops, new information and feedback continually degrades/alters the concept as its being constructed. Mismatches with reality grow. When a loop becomes fatigued or outdated new cycles/loops can join during the “quite short periods of no conscious content.”Like breaking into an on-going conversation the model is updated, repaired or replaced on the fly.

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OODA’s/LIDA’s are the control systems which never restThe Deep Story is in command

Every phase of a deep story runs on a longer time-scale than OODA’s/LIDA’s. “Against such a background, actions and decisions become critically important. Actions must be taken over and over again and in many different ways. Decisions must be rendered to monitor and determine the precise nature of the actions needed that will be compatible with the goal.” [7] OODA’s/LIDA’s work as the lookouts for the lazy System 2 keeping it updated as needed. Their shorter time-scale allows them greater sensitivity to changes. It also allows these short-term “working memories” to be easily disposed of keeping valuable computational space available for real problems.

Deep stories face two major challenges, changing goals and entropy. For the former the goals of survive, survive on our own terms, thrive and grow are constrained and influenced by changing environments, internal and external. A threat one moment/cycle can become an opportunity the next. This can reverse the course of an action in milliseconds. Entropy means that each phase of a deep story faces decay without introducing new energy in the form of work, i.e. new information. Even in quiet times updating needs to be done to match a changing environment.

Simply doing more of the same thing, or doing it better works for awhile. In the short run the desireable steady state maybe maintained. This is often the view within an organization or an internally focused system, don’t fix what ain’t broke. These systems exist in a bubble and are resistant to change.

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Working with time scalesOODA’s-fast and short-lived; Deep Stories-slow and long lasting

OODA’s are sensitive to anything that “engages the spotlight of attention.” [31] A short list includes; novelty, relevancy (to the norm or an anomaly), informativeness, problems, inconsistency (a break in the patterns necessary to maintain the current state), violated expectations and whatever can’t be dealt with by System 1 (we maybe in over our head). [31] Once something new has “engaged the spotlight of attention” System 2 can begin work.

The difference in time scales between OODA’s and Deep Stories makes this marriage possible. The shorter time scales of the former allow for quick observation, faster reorientation, rapid decision-making and action at a small energy cost. These rapid cycles and loops are rendered at every stage of the deep story. It’s their short time-scale that makes them invisible when viewed against the longer time-scale of the story itself. We know that a computer is composed of atoms, but we can’t see them, just the hardware they make up. This is a short-coming in language.

“Action is seen, as it were, through the prism of ‘a decision…’ It is not a decision but a sequence of acts of deciding being described as though it were a single decision. Language is always reducing complexities.” [24]

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Deep Stories, conflict and OODA’s"War is… an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”

Carl von Clausewitz

“In making the final cut of ideas to include in the book, I decided to leave out adversarial decision-making, so I limited my explicit discussion of the OODA loop to a few passages.

I was surprised to discover just how deeply the ideas in Tempo resonated with OODA. Though I was using a different vocabulary and exploring decision-making phenomena in non-adversarial settings, I seemed to have converged on many of the same core foundational themes, such as entropy, mental models, narratives and of course, tempo itself.” [26]

We cannot understand decision-making in soccer without considering an active, hostile and capable opponent. The opponent will not willing submit to our will. He or she must be compelled to do our bidding. At the same time they will attempt to compel us to do theirs. Decision-making resembles a rapid (OODA time-scales) negative feedback loop between efforts to isolate the opponent and to interact with teammates physically, mentally or morally against the background of the on-going enactment. Both parties have a say in how the story unfolds and ends.

Whoever can get the jump on their opponent and operate at a higher tempo (shorter time-scale) has an advantage. They will be able to shape the deep story as it’s being enacted. Players who think “what effect can I have on the opponent” will have a significant mental edge over those who think “what can I do.” The former starts with an external target, the later with internal capabilities and constraints.

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Selected references

1. ARTMAN, H. 2000, Team Situation Assessment and Information Distribution (Ergonomics, Vol. 43, No. 8, 1111-1128).

2. BAARS, B. FRANKLIN, S. 2007, An architectural model of conscious brain functions: Global Workspace Theory and IDA (Elsevier, Neural Networks 20, 955-961).

3. BARON, J. 2008, Thinking and Deciding, Fourth Edition (New York: Cambridge University Press).4. BEA, R. 2011, Managing Rapidly Developing Crises: Real-Time Prevention of Failures (Deepwater Horizon Study

Group, Working Paper).5. BONGAARDT, R. 1996, Shifting Focus, The Bernstein Tradition in Movement Science (Amsterdam: Druk 80).6. BOYD, J. 2011, Conceptual Spiral (http://pogoarchives.org/m/dni/john_boyd_compendium/conceptual-spiral-

20111100.pdf). 7. BOYD, J. 1976, Destruction and Creation

(http://pogoarchives.org/m/dni/john_boyd_compendium/destruction_and_creation.pdf) 8. BRAFMAN, O. & BRAFMAN R. 2008, Sway, The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior (New York: Doubleday).9. CONKLIN, J. 2005, Wicked Problems & Social Complexity (http://cognexus.org/wpf/wickedproblems.pdf).10. DORNER, D. 1989, The Logic of Failure, Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations (New York: Merloyd

Lawrence Book).11. DUGGAN, W. 2007, Strategic Intuition, The Creative Spark in Human Achievement (New York: Columbia Business

School Publishing).12. FRANKLIN, S. 1997, Artificial Minds (London, England: Bradford Book).13. GIBSON, E. 1988, Exploratory Behavior in the Development of Perceiving, Acting, and Acquiring of Knowledge

(Annual Reviews, 39: 1-41).14. GIGERENZER, G. BRIGHTON, H. 2009, Homo Heuristics: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences (Topics in

Cognitive Science I, 107-143).15. GIGERENZER, G. GAISSMAIER, W. 2011 Heuristic Decision Making (Annual Review Psychology, 62:451-482).

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Selected references

16. GREN, M. ZIERHOFER, W. 2003, The Unity of Difference, A Critical Appraisal of Niklas Luhmann’s Theory of Social Systems in the Context of Corporeality and Spatiality (Environment and Planning, Vol. 35, 615-630).

17. KAHNEMAN, D. 2011, Thinking Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux).18. KLEIN, G. 1998, Sources of Power, How People Make Decisions (Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press).19. LAVE, J. & WENGER, E. 1991, Situated Learning, Legitimate Peripheral Practice (New York: Cambridge University

Press).20. LUAN, S. 2011, A Signal-Detection Analysis of Fast and Frugal Trees (Psychological Review, Vol. 118, No. 2 316-

338).21. LUHMANN, N. 2011, Familiarity, Confidence, Trust: Problems and Alternatives (Trust: Making and Breaking

Cooperative Relations, Dept. of Sociology, University of Oxford, Chpt. 6, 94-107).22. MACLEAN, N. 1992, Young Men and Fire (Chicago, Il: University of Chicago Press).23. MADL, T. BAARS, B. FRANKLIN, S. 2011, The Timing of the Cognitive Cycle (Open Access, Plosone).24. PAGET, M. 2004, The Unity of Mistakes (Philadelphia, Pa: Temple University Press).25. PIRSIG, R. 1974, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, An Inquiry Into Values (New York: Harper Perennial) 26. RAO, V. July 11, 2011, Tempo and OODA: The Backstory (http://www.tempobook.com/2011/07/22/tempo-and-

ooda-the-backstory/).27. RAO, V. 2011, Tempo, Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making (Ribbonfarm Inc).28. STAHL, B. 2005, The Obituary as Bricolage: The Mann Gulch Disaster and the Problem of Heroic Rationality

(European Journal of Information Systems, 14, 487-491).29. TALEB, N. 2007, The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York: Random House).30. TVERSKY, A. KAHNEMAN, D. 1974, Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Science, New Series, Vol.

185, No. 4157, 1124-1131). 31. VICKERS, J. 2007, Perception, Cognition, and Decision Training, The Quiet Eye in Action (Champaign, Il: Human

Kinetics).

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Selected references

32. WANDER, S. 2007, Rocky Mountain Death Trap, (NASA, System Failure Case Studies, Vol. 1, No. 7, 1-4).33. WEICK, K. 1993, The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster (Administrative Science

Quarterly, 38, 628-652).34. WEICK, K. SUTCLIFFE, K. 2005, Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking (Organizational Science, Vol. 16, No.

4, 409-421).35. WEICK, K. 2007, The Generative Properties of Richness (Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 50, No. 1, 14-19).36. WENGER, E. 1998, Communities of Practice, Learning, Meaning, and Identity (New York: Cambridge University

Press).

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Thank you“I’ll live or die by my own ideas.” Johan Cruyff

Presentation created January 2014 by Larry Paul, Peoria Arizona.All references are available as stated.All content is the responsibility of the author.For questions or to inquire how to arrange a consultation or workshop on this topic you can contact me at larry4v4@hotmail.com, subject line; decision/action model.For more information visit the bettersoccermorefun channel on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/user/bettersoccermorefun?feature=watch or Street soccer, a guide to using small sided games at Udemy, https://www.udemy.com/street-soccer-a-guide-to-using-small-sidedgames/?sl=E0IZeFxSVw%3D%3D