The Hidden Cost of Efficiency

A bridge note between Part II and Part III of "Rebuilding the System."

Every academy director loves the word efficient. Courts full. Rotations tight. No wasted time. From the balcony it looks like mastery—every player moving, every ball struck, every minute accounted for. From the baseline it feels like compression.

Efficiency works in business. More output per hour, better margin. But learning doesn't run on margins. It runs on curiosity, timing, and reflection. What looks efficient from above suffocates the person inside.

When Order Becomes the Goal

A coach sets up a perfect 60-minute session. Six stations. Each drill timed. Each correction quick. Every player gets exactly the same number of reps. Parents nod. The clock hits zero. Another "productive" hour.

Order became the product. Learning was the by-product.

The player who needed thirty seconds to think between balls never got that chance. The one who wanted to experiment with a different rhythm didn't have time to fail. The structure was flawless—and sterile.

Why We Chase It

Efficiency feels good because it's measurable. You can count reps, fill schedules, track attendance. You can show parents numbers, not questions. And when you're managing dozens of players, structure feels like safety.

The cost is attention. Optimize for speed and you eliminate discovery. Every second saved by skipping reflection steals understanding.

We confuse motion with progress. Factories made the same mistake. Coaching inherited it.

What Gets Lost

Here's what disappears when efficiency takes over:

Silence. The moment between mistake and correction where curiosity forms. That three-second pause where a player's face changes and you know they just figured something out. We schedule that away.

Experiment. The extra try that wasn't on the schedule but teaches the most. The "can I try that again?" that gets denied because we're already behind. The discovery that happens when structure loosens.

Connection. The small pause to check if the message actually landed. The moment a coach looks a player in the eye and asks "did that make sense?" instead of moving to the next drill. The feedback loop that makes coaching work.

Those are the inefficiencies that produce insight. The best sessions feel alive precisely because they leave room for things that can't be timed.

The Paradox of Progress

Programs call this "maximizing court time." The unspoken rule: if a player isn't hitting, they aren't learning. So we fill every second with contact.

But thinking is part of movement. Stillness is part of rhythm. Efficiency—the industrial kind—wipes both away.

Rebuilding coaching means redefining what productivity looks like. Not how many balls hit the net. How many thoughts survive contact with failure.

The Pivot Toward Feel

Maybe the next evolution of coaching isn't about speed at all. It's about feel—sensing when attention is alive and when it's dying. That can't be scheduled. It has to be read.

On some courts, coaches are already doing this instinctively. They slow down when curiosity spikes. They hold silence when reflection starts. They measure success in understanding. Not efficiency. You've probably seen it. You might even have felt it.

Tomorrow we'll look at how those coaches shape the message to fit the mind—and what happens when communication itself becomes the blueprint.

Next: Friday 14 Nov — How Great Coaches Shape the Message to Fit the Mind
When teaching turns from delivery to discovery.