Board Member Profile: Dr. William “Ivey” MacKenzie

Associate Professor of Management, University of Alabama in Huntsville

Ivey MacKenzie is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He received his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business. His research and consulting work focuses on how organizations identify and develop human capital resources to gain a competitive advantage.  He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Managing Human Capital, Competitive Strategy, Leadership, Organizational Behavior, and Strategic Human Resource Management. He currently serves as an Executive Editor for The Journal of Social Psychology.

We sat down with Ivey to hear a little more about his perspective on the Tactical Athlete. Here is what he had to say:

(TA-LB): The themes of the Tactical Athlete Leadership Board are Readiness, Resilience, and Recovery. From your perspective, why are these themes important, and what about them resonates with your experience in the human performance industry? 

(Ivey): Readiness, resilience and recovery are critical when responding to unexpected challenges for individuals, teams and organizations. While each of these is important for successfully navigating the unexpected, readiness is the one theme that resonates most with me. Within organizations we seek to develop human capital resources to gain a competitive advantage. A key aspect of developing human capital is training. Through training, we ensure readiness within individuals so that they can effectively respond to challenges, even when the unexpected might arise.

(TA-LB): Looking to the future, what technological innovation do you think will have the most significant impact on tactical athletes?
(Ivey): This is both a fun and challenging question, after all technology is constantly changing. The technology we have available in our pockets today was only a dream a generation ago. I think it is a safe prediction that artificial intelligence (AI), wearable sensors, as well as augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) will all have a significant impact on tactical athletes. As someone who is enamored with AR and VR, I think the ability to simulate different situations and environments will be a huge asset to tactical athletes in the future as they develop their knowledge, skills, and abilities.

(TA-LB): The spirit of the TALB is to bring a diverse set of perspectives to the table aligned toward a singular purpose: to sustain the tactical athlete of today and prepare for the tactical athlete of tomorrow. Why is it essential for the broader human performance industry to work together towards this end? 

(Ivey): This is a great question and I think it ties in nicely with my previous response. Technology is changing very rapidly and there are few limits in the way in which we can leverage technology to advance tactical athletes. Collaboration across disciplines and leveraging different perspectives will allow us to be more creative in the decisions we make and the tools we utilize. In management, we teach that diversity of perspectives among team members lead to better and more creative solutions to problems.

(TA-LB): What is the greatest challenge to innovation in the human performance sector?

(Ivey): One of the greatest challenges I face in my own research is the need for technical skills to explore the benefits of technology to individual and team performance. What once could be answered through a simple laboratory experiment, now requires a group of researchers from very different areas with different perspectives and motivations. Finding a solid team that can collaborate across disciplines is both challenging and extremely rewarding once it is in place.