Game tape

I got to Penn in 1993, just as Philadelphia was about to experience yet another winter with multiple major snowstorms and the Penn Quakers were about to go on a 22-win streak that finally ended at Columbia on October 1995. These two events are meaningful to me in that I experienced “winter” for the first time in my life and I got to experience Penn Football’s dominance over the Ivy League from within.

My work-study job was being a “filmer,” a camera operator, for the team. Learning how to operate commercial filming equipment and lugging hundreds of pounds to the upper-most row of Franklin Field in any weather on a regular basis became a worthwhile price to pay since I realized I was getting an additional degree on “game tape.” I payed close attention to how the entire coaching and training staff used it to objectively bring the best out in each individual player and study the strengths and weaknesses of the team. I was even amazed at learning that the urgency to produce edited tapes was driven by the time it took to get tapes to the other schools since every program exchanged film with each other.

Chances are you work for an organization that expects you to have regular meetings with your boss and with your team. How do you prepare your game tape to share an objective review of your and your team’s performance and progress, strengths being further developed, and weaknesses identified and being mitigated?

If you don’t have an approach to creating your team updates or one-on-one’s with your “head coach,” consider the following:

—> Set the context with an executive summary. (10%)

—> Establish facts and risks thoroughly. (40%)

—> Offer analysis and insights, including attribution and correlation. (40%)

—> Wrap up with clear take-aways and specific next steps. (10%)