Dr Scott McLean
Dr Scott McLean is the Founder and Director of Leverage Point Consulting. Scott is recognised as a global leader in the application of complexity and systems science approaches in sport. Scott’s background and expertise includes sport science, safety science, and human factors, applied across sport, defence, road safety, AI safety and outdoor recreation. As such, Scott brings a diverse set of cross-disciplinary skills and perspectives that directly translate to help solve some of sports most persistent current and future issues.
Scott has strong collaborations in sport and has worked and conducted research with multiple national and international sporting and government organisations including, the English Premier League, the World Anti-Doping Agency, International Olympic Committee, Sport Integrity Australia, the Australian Institute of Sport, Athletics Australia, Cycling Australia, the French Anti-Doping Agency, Sport and Recreation Victoria, the English Institute of Sport, Scottish Rugby Union, US Office of Naval Research, the Defence Science & Technology Group, and multiple elite clubs in football, AFL, netball, and Para Sport.
Prior to his transition to LPC, Scott was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast, where he now holds the position of Adjunct Associate Professor. As an academic, Scott has over 100 publications, including books, peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, reports, conference articles and abstracts.
Our mission is to help sporting organisations navigate the complexity of high-performance environments. We support organisations to design better systems, improve decision making and policy, and build environments that support elite performance, athlete wellbeing, and sports integrity and governance.
Leverage Point Consulting (LPC) specialises in the application of state-of-the-art systems science, safety science, and sport science to respond to the complex challenges every sporting organisation faces.
The most persistent problems in sport, such as injury and wellbeing, performance, integrity, and governance issues are not caused by individuals or isolated factors, but from the interactions of the components within the broader systems in which they operate. LPC works with clients to diagnose failure points, co-design smarter systems, and build internal capability for long-term and sustainable organisation performance.
From high-performance teams and national and international policy reform to education workshops and applied R&D, we help you find and act on your system’s leverage points.
Books
This book showcases how Human Factors and Ergonomics are being applied to improve performance, safety, and system design in sport. With insights from leading researchers and practitioners, it explores real-world applications across a range of sports, offering a valuable resource for academics, practitioners, and sports organisations alike.
“I’ve been lucky enough to work with Scott now for a number of years on projects that are both focussed on academic research and creating impact within a sporting organisation. He brings great insight to the table in relation to both knowledge and methods around system approaches. His experience and awareness of the context and operation of sporting organisations enable him to translate his understanding and techniques very effectively. This is key to successfully delivering impactful projects. His flexible working style, positive personality and drive to complete tasks on time makes him a great work colleague and one who can deliver high quality outputs to time.”
Professor Barry Drust
Director of The Graduate School of Sport and Professional Practice
University of Birmingham
“I have had the pleasure of engaging with Scott as a funding agency for three projects financed by WADA. Each project was delivered on time and in a very professional manner with no fuss. The research itself was extremely insightful and informative for the work of anti-doping. The idea of doping as a complex wicked problem has been understood and highlighted for a number of years, the research of Scott and his colleagues has illuminated this space in a way that makes understanding such a complex issue accessible. By conceptualising anti-doping through a systems thinking approach, it has given anti-doping practitioners and policy-makers a new lens in which to think about preventing doping beyond the traditional paradigm. At WADA, we have used his concepts and models to communicate complicated messages at global conferences.
As well as helping to understand the system at the higher level, Scott’s research has also provided insight into the constituent parts of this overarching problem, namely things like understanding unintentional doping and its risk factors, including supplement use. This allows for a more atomic comprehension of the behaviours that athletes might engage in that can lead to doping violations, which in turn can directly inform how anti-doping agencies educate athletes beyond abstract warnings.
Scott is a very collegial person to work with on a personal level, and I look forward to working with him again in the future. “
Tony Cunningham
Head of Research and Policy, Education
World Anti-Doping Agency
“Working with Scott has been immensely useful. His approach to examining system issues has improved my thinking and reasoning and helped me find solutions I couldn’t previously see. Whilst his work helped me address specific questions, the techniques are generalizable to many issues and have benefitted me far beyond the areas I initially wanted to examine.”
