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The Data Points & Analytics That Will Drive Higher Education
Numbers are powerful. It’s possible to track and quantify almost everything, but data sets are useless unless we put them to work. How do you understand and USE your data? Are your decisions based on reliable metrics? Leverage your data to inform your choices and measure your efficacy.
Inform Decisions
Data without a story is nothing but a confusing bag of numbers.
A couple of weeks ago, we presented a statistical report to one of our clients in North Carolina profiling the students that had registered for Continuing Education courses using our online registration system. The information we presented was well received by campus administration, and it instantly armed the Continuing Education staff with usable information.
Although we designed our online system to gather information not easily available in other systems, we believe the “special sauce” of what we created does not come from the technology we developed, but rather from our interpretation of the data it provides.
Early in our careers, no matter what data we brought forward, it never seemed to be enough for those sitting around the table, and conversations concerning this type of data usually went nowhere. The time it took to gather such data instead felt wasted, and we found ourselves asking what went wrong. Over time, the answer to that question became more evident.
Data does not provide answers. It informs decisions.
Data must always be presented with a story in mind. Data without a story is nothing but a confusing bag of numbers. For example, if you were presented with a number, say, 25,338.84, would that figure have any meaning to you? Of course not, as it is without context. However, if one was to say that the figure represents the closing market value of the DOW Jones Industrial Average yesterday, then it's a number worth noting.
The stories told with data require context in order to be of any use to an audience.
What we delivered recently from our registration system to a client can be summarized as the following:
“In the last three months, one single employee managed over $25,000.00 of income to the college, while one third of registrations happened outside of business hours and during weekends. 34 students did not complete their registration, but here is who they are. On average, it took three clicks for registered students to go from enrollment to payment to confirmation. More than half of your students registered using a mobile device last month.”
Once a story is created, you can compose a document with all kinds of detailed numbers to support it, but the story itself needs to be simple to understand. It makes it easier to lead a conversation about data and how its use can help move peers beyond any misconceptions. Retelling this story can help drive data driven decision making at an organizational level.
We have found that those who expect to make perfect decisions (based on "perfect" data) need help understanding that decisions will always be imperfect, and that making decisions on that premise will always have unintended consequences. As campus leaders, one needs to help lead others in that understanding of what the data may represent.
Even the most complete data set without context is useless.
However, an incomplete data set gathered daily can be very powerful. Don’t shy away from gathering data until you know what you need. Instead, start gathering data today. As a practice, if you obtain a simple headcount number starting today, that data might be very interesting. Yet, if you pull a simple headcount number every day for two years, you will be able to tell exactly how and when your students enter your college, and if and when they leave. You may also use that data to measure future admission cycles and start to better understand how the ramp-up compares to historical data. All of this insight can be gleaned from a single headcount number gathered over time.
Data requires context. Are you in a position to tell a story and use data to better inform your future decisions?
Cohort Comparatives
Data without a story is nothing but a confusing bag of numbers.
Following a previous article, we received some questions about specifics around college reporting, and what specific metrics are important to follow. Out of all metrics with which we have worked, there is one common thread that makes all other variables clearer: Cohort comparatives.
Data without a story is nothing but a confusing bag of numbers.
The following example is based on a fake strategy by a fake college which we we’ll call College-A. In this example, the base year is 2015 (to illustrate two years’ worth of usable data).
The Problem: College-A has noticed a drop in incoming headcount and needs to develop a strategy to balance their student body.
The Strategy: College-A has decided to guarantee tuition for four years for any freshman entering in the fall of 2015.
The following graphs represent (A) Headcount, (B) Income, (C) Number of Freshman, and (D) Total Student Body.
This graph shows a definite inflection point around 2015. It illustrates that the institution has turned a corner on increasing headcount.
The following is how the population looks year by year.
As one would expect from sample (fake) data, the freshman population appears nice and steady, to the tune of 1,000 new students every year.
However, that was never the problem that College-A was trying to solve. Retention is the target goal, and this graph shows an increase in sophomore retention starting in 2015. (We would not expect any changes to affect retention of other classes, as they have not yet experienced the effect of the “Price Guarantee.”) By observing then what happens when sophomores become juniors, it illustrates the effect that College-A desires!
What did that "Price Guarantee" cost the college?
The next graph compares the “what if” scenario of total income gained by raising tuition and fees every year, versus what happened when a “Price Guarantee” was implemented.
Despite achieving its goals, there is clearly a cost associated with this program, and that has significantly changed the cumulative cash at hand for College-A.
The remaining question for the institution then becomes, Should we keep on going, or should we scrap this program? To best answer that question, we need to look at cohort retention in a much smarter way.
Consider the following graph, which shows the same data presented above, but under a new light. It shows the cumulative effect of the retention bulge that was well received by College-A in the graph above.
By observing the data in this way, we can clearly see the bulge moving through the different cohorts. C1 is the group who entered as freshman in 2014; C2 entered in 2015, C3 entered in 2016, and C4 entered in 2017. This is the most compelling of all graphs shown because it clearly displays the effect of the “Price Guarantee” in the minds of the students.
While the 2014 cohort was not directly impacted or phased by the decision (which was made in 2015 and it did not include them), we can clearly see how retention has increasingly improved our retention from 2015 through now. The areas are enlarging, which means College-A has achieved the goal it set to achieve. (This would be particularly interesting and even more useful if this plan had caused unwanted attrition in the 2014 cohort that was on campus when the announcement was made but that could not take advantage of the “Price Guarantee.”)
As a parting thought, we ask you: Would college income improve as this plan takes hold? Perhaps that is a topic for another article.
Numbers to Track
The success and failure of the college as a business depends on these three numbers.
If you work for a private institution, there are three basic numbers that your institution will look for in the next couple of weeks: New student enrollment, retention, and discount rate. The success and failure of the college as a business depends on these three numbers. In the last week, we realized many people outside the business office don’t always know why those numbers are important. We think it’s paramount to understand these figures and how each relates to the health and success of your institution.
New Student Enrollment
Obviously, acquiring new students is necessary to any institution. But there are hidden markers that also require attention.
Cost of Acquisition
The admissions office will closely track how much it costs your institution to acquire each student. That cost is typically calculated as salaries in admissions, marketing costs, admissions travel, open houses, an apportionment of the institution’s overhead, incidentals, and other activities. Divide that total by the number of new students gained, and that figure should then represent the cost of acquisition. What amount per student does your institution feel is too high? Does the cost of acquisition exceed that figure, or does the institution find it to be too little? As we’ve previously mentioned, a general comparison to other colleges in this point it irrelevant. What matters here is a year-to-year comparison to understand where your institution stands.
If a school is not getting enough students, it can pump up the volume on admissions and attempt to boost future enrollment. The measure of how well that is working will be the calculated cost of acquisition.
Likelihood of Future Retention
Every student that enters your college will have a known index indicating the likelihood they will complete their program. Some of the factors include the amount of financial aid (more does not equal better), chosen program fit, family history, geographical location, religious affiliation, access to sports, SAT/ACT scores, and other like items. When your admissions office detects the collection of student indices are lower than desired, they know they have their work cut out for them in the upcoming year, for they are always expected to fill the holes in retention with more incoming students. (It goes without saying that a dip in retention bodes badly for the institution.) Smart admissions administrators will prepare the institution for the upcoming class and encourage student services to cater their offerings to increase the retention of the upcoming cohort.
Retention
The number of students who return to continue their studies is the single most prized possession of every academy. Losing a single student is not only bad for the student, but for the rankings of the institution and the budget topline.
A rule of thumb used for calculating raw student revenue loss is to multiply the number of non-retained students by their foregone income, discounted by your average discount rate. As an example, let’s say as a 4-year institution, you expect a $30,000.00/year income from your students. The stated discount rate is 20%. Now suppose the institution failed to retain 50 freshmen and 10 sophomores. Lost income will be calculated as (($30,000.00 x 50 x 3) + ($30.000.00 x 10 x 2)) * 0.80. That means an 80% loss of 3 years of income for your freshman cohort and 2 years of income for your sophomore cohort. This example would then represent an income loss of $4,080,000.00 for your institution. This number grows quickly and will be monitored closely by your institution.
Discount Rate
The institutional discount rate is often confused with general financial aid numbers. They are not the same. Students will receive money from a variety of different sources, including parents, grandparents, the federal government, and student loans. Usually the college itself will provide funding to students in three important categories: athletic scholarships, non-athletic scholarships funded by the college endowment, and uncovered non-athletic scholarships.
Uncovered non-athletic scholarships are monies given in the form of scholarship to students that are not offset by some other income of the college. In other words, these scholarships are direct discounts given to students who receive such scholarships. (It is likely that a large portion of an institution’s athletic scholarships fall under this category as well). As an example, if one student is given a full scholarship worth $30,000.00, from where does that money come? If an institution has millions of dollars in the bank earning at least $30,000.00 in interest (college endowment), it can withdraw $30,000.00 from the bank and pay itself to service the scholarship for that student. That translates into $30,000.00 to run the institution for one year. However, if the endowment only earned $15,000.00, and if a $30,000.00 full scholarship was still given to one student, then the school would have no option but to run its operations for $15,000.00 that year. The discount rate in this case is 50%.
Using this example, when one extrapolates from one to thousands of students (which is more realistic), maintaining close control of the discount rate becomes ever more crucial to ensuring that the institution is not sinking itself just to fill the seats.
Understanding the numbers related to new student enrollment, retention, and discount rate will help provide a general understanding of where your institution is headed.
Looking at the Numbers
At the most basic level, simply compare the cost of your institution to these numbers, and one can get a feel for if the institution is (but doesn't consider itself to be) an isolated factor.
How sustainable is the cost of your tuition and fees? Let’s first understand the numbers.
Recent certified data (usually a year behind) shows that the average cost of tuition in the “2016–2017 school year was $33,480 at private colleges, $9,650 for state residents at public colleges, and $24,930 for out-of-state residents attending public universities.”[1] At the most basic level, simply compare the cost of your institution to these numbers, and one can get a feel for if the institution is (but doesn't consider itself to be) an isolated factor. Rather, this comparative is only good to illustrate how much head space the institution has if it needs to adjust its top line. For example, a private institution with a total cost if $19,000.00/year has some room to increase tuition and fees, but an institution with tuition hovering in the $40,000.00 range would face difficulty increasing any part of its cost structure.
It is important to say FundFive believes the rising cost trends in education as defined by increases beyond inflationary adjustments are reversible and must be carefully measured against its impact to students. This article is not a discussion on philosophies related to access to education (which have enormous merit), but instead concentrates on decisions related to the vital sustainability of college operations, and the difficult answers to hard questions administrators have no choice but to answer.
That said, let's continue this thinking process. Included are three tables to help frame the rest of this conversation. The first table (below) contains average tuition and fee costs, which range between $9,000/year and $40,000/year, versus the number of students in the simulated institutions. The resulting table displays simple income for the institution, or simple top line. (Note: don’t worry about considering the complexities of financial aid. That will come later.) Here is a snapshot of the table:
Next, consider the institutional discount rate (which is financial aid institutional money) as a whole. This table will be connected to the pseudo institution highlighted above for an institution with approximately 10,000 students. This is what that table looks like:
Next, we will create a table called the “Opportunity Table”. It lists the opportunities for the institution related to income from reductions in the discount rate:
What this table tells us is that in this pseudo 10,000 student institution, for every discount rate change of 1%, it will save the college $900,000.00 per year (considering a yearly tuition rate of $9,000). For an institution of 13,000 students, that savings equates to $1.3 million, and so on. Although the math is obvious, laying it out in three parts will set your mind on the moving parts of this problem.
How hard is it to move the discount needle by 1%? It may be challenging, but it is perfectly attainable. If your institution keeps a firewall between student aid and institutional funds, such as many public institutions, then use these same tables and substitute discount rate for income loss. If you find these numbers to be worth an institutional change, then push hard for it.
Considerations around these tables will also give you a gut feeling about what your institution is willing to do. If decreasing the discount rate or income loss does not sit well with administration, then you must increase top line income. The cultural changes needed to make that happen are beyond the scope of this article, but we will explore those topics at a later time.
[1] http://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmpl.jhtml?articleId=10064
An Ant in a Barrel
Search the data set and compare your institution to the data about students entering post-secondary education nationwide.
As collaborative as those in Higher Education attempt to appear, when most of us get into meetings to discuss headcounts and trends, we usually feel isolated. In that sense, we are like an ant in a barrel. Imagine you can only see the inside of the barrel from an ant's point of view: an opening to the sky that hints at the existence of a wide world above it. But nothing about that world is clear.
Thankfully, there are some tools freely and readily available that can help you plan for the inevitable adjustment to headcount. One such tool is the database provided by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES).
Your institution reports IPEDS data on an annual yearly basis, which is then loaded into an NCES database, and melded with information about all other elementary, secondary and post-secondary information in the country.
Curious about what is happening to your enrollment? Search the data set and compare your institution to the data about students entering post-secondary education nationwide. In just a few minutes, you can obtain the answer to that question and many others.
Here are trends of students entering post-secondary degree institutions from 2001 through 2016.
What do you see? How can these numbers support your strategy? We can go on and on about what kind of granular information you can get from this database, but it would not be nearly as powerful as inciting you to go play with it.
We challenge you to visit https://nces.ed.gov/ and get informed. Let us know what you find!
Disgraceful Data Sets: A Review of College Alumni Offices
Finances need to be in order to better anchor a growth strategy, provide the necessary capital for product development, or fuel a marketing campaign.
A business is only as good as the data that it has on which to operate and make decisions. Finances need to be in order to better anchor a growth strategy, provide the necessary capital for product development, or fuel a marketing campaign. For every department and facet of a business, data is generated on a daily basis. The question is whether or not it’s being collected and then leveraged as part of the decision making process.
In higher education, there exists a sub-industry that relies heavily on data and on building relationship capital among its constituents: the alumni and development office. With thousands of potential graduates waiting to be added to a university’s Rolodex, it is imperative that there not only exist a baseline of data about each and every former student (customer) but the processes in place to collect and use this information.
Today’s information landscape makes it easier than ever to locate and engage graduates. The rise and adoption of Facebook and LinkedIn as THE standards for sharing information should be every alumni office’s bread and butter. Why not capitalize on the free exchange of information, almost all of which is self-posted, solidifying the likelihood that the data is accurate and reliable?
Questions that an alumni office should ask itself:
How many alumni graduated in a certain year? Of that number, how many have we obtained good information about? Is the information current? When was the last time the information was updated?
Can we identify 15-20 alumni from each year that could become social media advocates? If so, are they on a social media website? What can we offer each individual for helping participate? (Send each alumni involved stickers, coffee mugs or a sweatshirt. Don’t be cheap: this simple notion could help generate handsome returns over time.)
How often does the college communicate with its alumni? Is there any record of communication being kept?
What does our online presence look like? Is the content relevant to our audience? Why would alumni use the website or connect with the college online?
Would alumni be willing to stump and share a page among their classmates?
So how would you go about creating a baseline? Check back tomorrow and read what FundFive suggests your team should do in order to address the issue getting your data in order.
Steps for Building a Baseline (All Free)
Create a Facebook Fan Page for the alumni office. Hang this page off the main university Fan Page if one exists. Be sure that navigation is intentional (cross reference the university athletics website, the admissions office, the main university website, etc.) and that others are aware that you are interested in helping drive traffic to their websites. Ask for each area to add links back to your new Fan Page. Also request that they promote on occasion your presence as a partner page.
Reach out across the university and identify other individuals that are collecting information about alumni (community relations, admissions, and registrar’s office, for starters). University employees often fail to recognize that they have a role as part of a greater entity to collaborate and work across departments and disciplines for the betterment of the school’s student, parent and alumni population. (Sorry, but we've seen this time and time again on scores of campuses across the country.)
Place an individual in the alumni office in charge of collecting the information that each member freely shares on their profile pages. Put together a spreadsheet with basic demographic columns (first name, last name, city, state, job title, industry, married status, number of children), and then set goals for collection. For example, if the college graduated 1,000 students between 1990 and 1992, make it a priority to obtain information on at least 40-50% of the graduates.
Other ideas for getting a hold of data:
Form a data standards committee and agree on the types of data being collected, and define a process for sharing. Map out a workflow for collection and identify a central data storage and owner.
Define a communications strategy for marketing to your audience. Be sure that the timings of mailings, emails, etc. are consistent and do not overlap. Also be sure that messages are personalized. Do not ask for information without first checking that the data doesn't exist elsewhere on campus, and do not collect information without sharing it back to the other offices across the business.
Be sure that there is a consistency in the messages that are sent. (There’s nothing worse as an alumnus than receiving multiple mailings asking for the same data. It reflects poorly on the brand and demonstrates that communication is broken internally.)
Have other suggestions that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear how you are approaching this need at your institution. Please comment below or contact FundFive for other suggestions on how to address these types of concerns on your campus.
What Can Higher Ed Learn From Video Games?
I am not a gamer. I never had an Atari growing up... no Nintendo, and certainly not a Game Boy. Some 40 years later, one of the top complaints I hear from parents with school aged kids is that they can’t get their kids to give up video games.
As a higher ed professional, that thought makes me cringe a bit, but as we watch the traditional classroom experience buckle under the weight of COVID-19, maybe it’s time for higher ed leaders to take a second, more serious look at gaming.
Why do kids become so enthralled with their phones or gaming systems? Why are GameStop stores still a thing, way after their musical counterparts have gone missing from strip malls? What is so engaging about video games?
Just last week, Epic Games bucked Apple in a very public way. In fact, the gaming company flipped Apple’s iconic YEAR NAME commercial against them. Epic is tired of Apple charging a 30% premium for gamers to download the Fortnite app. To move against Apple Computer, especially in such a public way, took an unbelievable amount of confidence. But, with 350 million registered Fortnite players, Epic decided that trolling was an effective way to make its point.
There is no arguing that the creative folks behind games and gaming consoles are onto something. Games, as a consumable item for young people, aren’t cheap. Game consoles can go for several hundred dollars. Most teens and young adults prioritize having a phone over having a car. Why?
Thirty years ago, I went to get my driver’s license on the very first day I could. I drove an old beat-up Chevy with an AM radio, and I was happy about it. I wanted to be able to see my friends on my terms, whenever I wanted to. My peers worked on their cars and washed their cars and rode together places. Technology has made it easier to connect. It’s nothing to have a face-to-face conversation with anyone in the world - instantly.
This fall, universities are canceling classes due to COVID-19. It’s just too risky to have students living in dorms together, physically distanced by only a few feet. Parents are concerned that their children will lose the “college experience”. Maybe they already have.
If my child was college-aged, I certainly would want them to be independent, make new friends, experience things on their own terms. I would want her to discover how to tackle the world without her parents hovering over her shoulder, but I also have to acknowledge that COVID-19 is not the only factor that will differentiate her experience from mine. Her life and the way she interacts with her friends is already vastly separate from what I experienced in my teenage years.
What I know about gaming, which is admittedly very little, is that the whole point is to overcome some sort of challenge, incrementally. Most games build upon themselves, adding new characters or abilities as the player completes levels of play. Games like Minecraft allow players to create their own worlds, and in Fortnite, occasionally avatars celebrate their players’ victories with an odd - and now viral - dance.
What does this tell us about what compels people to be engaged with video games?
Access is easy. The beginning levels are conquered simply, helping players build confidence. Challenges become more and more difficult, but rewards - while intangible - are celebrated. There are prizes to work toward in addition to those that players don’t suspect. Games give players limited options; players feel some control over their outcome, deepening engagement.
Today’s games add something that was missing in the days of Pac Man and the Super Mario Brothers: community. Where arcades once helped attract scores of children, kids are now connecting with other gamers virtually, talking to them online or via personal headsets during games. Those connections could be with kids down the block or halfway across the world.
If we focus on the positive side of that connection, it’s easy to understand why so many young people are dedicated gamers. Higher ed could learn something here.
Make enrolling easy
Give students little wins in the beginning of their experience at your college
Make goals achievable and celebrate them
Throw a surprise in here and there
Build affinity by building community and fostering events (online or otherwise) that are not necessarily academic
Find ways for students to connect with one another - especially while learning remotely
Personalize experiences as much as possible
It’s naive to think colleges will go back to “normal” anytime soon. The reality is, we will never come back to the place we were before COVID-19. What we can do, however, is notice how our students engage with each other in ways outside of our walls, and work to incorporate successful tactics into instruction.
Built-in Analytics
As children, our parents encouraged us to play board games at times when we weren't able to be outside, instead of watching too much television. Now as a parent, I make sure to set aside time each week to also encourage game play with my children. It brings enjoyment to an evening and helps them settle down after an active day, and it helps instill accountability to a set of rules (while also forcing them to get along for the good of the game). Whether it's a game of Rummy or a round of Scrabble, my oldest child keeps score on a piece of paper torn from a notepad. We then keep score over the course of a few games until we run out of page.
I've always enjoyed games, and the landscape for online play is ubiquitous and expanding. While I personally don't keep many games on my smartphone (as a way to reduce distraction), I do have two weaknesses: Words with Friends and The New York Times Crossword. I play Words with two of my younger brothers almost daily, and I try to fit in a crossword over a cup of coffee each morning.
There is something different about today's digital games that I hadn't noticed until last week, though: games are now including data as a natural extension of game play, allowing a player to review and digest past performances, which acts as a means for improvement and another point of engagement. The concept of badges (or awards for meeting a goal) have been around for some time, and as an incentive, it's a compelling notion to promote greater adoption. This ultimately results in more time in the game. But when I discovered that I could look back through my statistics and review specific data points, such as the percentage of a type of word that I played, or the average time it took me to complete a puzzle, I was very surprised.
At the same time, I was immediately reminded that Higher Education still has a ways to go. My primary question was, "Why isn't data baked into everything we do within higher education and then used to make decisions daily?" Institutions have been making progress, collecting and leveraging a number of specific data points (i.e. IPEDS), and those practices are subsequently starting to have an impact on certain pillars within each institution, such as in Admissions or Financial Aid offices. The push towards greater student success and learning outcomes acts as another primary driver for data collection. But as that data consist of metrics that are only available in hindsight (often times after a semester ends or in year over year trends), why is there not a greater catalyst to require data collection at a more granular level throughout the course of a semester? For example, campus card systems capture every interaction, and so there is an opportunity to identify patterns in student behavior that may be cause for concern before a student retreats into isolation or withdraws from an institution. Learning management systems track engagement patterns in online courses, allowing instructors to monitor patterns and engage if a student begins to fall behind with coursework.
But when it comes to the daily insight that is possible with sound financial data and resulting practices, the distribution of relevant budget information remains a laggard. Outside the Business Office, it's not too common to find others looking at their spending patterns or adjusting their operations in response to the climate of the institution. Higher education needs to build analytics into its fiscal practices in order to help secure its financial future.
Presentation is Everything
With the abundance of information that is collected and retained in our information systems, the challenge of uncovering and highlighting the most meaningful data often becomes unmanageable and overwhelming. One must know what specific sources to target and how to combine data to create context. Once that data has been obtained, the real trick then becomes distilling and presenting data in a clear view.
University data sets are very similar, in that each captures information about its business, including customer demographics, academic offerings, financial operations, and historical records. What higher education leadership has struggled with over time is having access to tools that allow their teams to view information in new ways. Recent product offerings in the market seem to understand this, and current trends indicate that the presentation of the data is the missing component.
Stand in line at a grocery store checkout, and you'll see rows of magazines related to pop culture, current events, health and fitness, and culinary adventures. With a few minutes to spare, flip through any of the food magazines and eye the beautiful plates and balanced arrangements of the meals featured in this month's issue. The meals aren't necessarily extravagant. In fact, save one or two ingredients, the meals are highlighted for readers in hopes that they may attempt to replicate them in their own kitchens. Often, the recipes are even included alongside the glossy photos.
However, when we prepare the same meal at home for family and friends, seldom does our dish look like the one on the pages of the magazine. Does that mean that our meal tastes any better or worse than the one gracing the current issue of Cook's Illustrated? Probably not. But it's in the presentation of the meal and how the dish is plated that incites our appetites. Ultimately, that is what leaves us with a sense of awe in the finished product.
Like the home chef with a pantry full of herbs and spices, many colleges and universities already have the right ingredients. The difficulty comes in creating a meaningful picture from its data. This undertaking requires time, resources, and the right tools to build a presentation that its administration has been missing.
Ready to Make a Decision?
"We need to make smarter decisions based on data."
How many times have you heard that sentence? Only on a very small number of occurrences does someone deliver that statement in an effort to focus a team, and the context of that direction is clear if it is based on the work at hand. The majority of time, however, that sentence is used by a leader who is not prepared to make a decision and would rather kill the conversation.
Any announcement without a clear ask will send teams working without a direction and detract from a common goal.
When it comes to leadership, our approach is different:
Think about the “WHAT” before you tell your team the “HOW.”
If you are working for a leader who is unknowingly breaking this rule, don’t revolt. Understand, plan, and help! Here are some other things that may be useful to you in that journey whether you hold a position of leadership or not.
Data will never tell you what to decide. Your gut will. Data will inform your decision, but don’t kill the process because the data is not perfect. It will never be perfect.
The same data can be used to tell two contradicting stories. Don’t let go of your judgement because somebody else has told a story different than yours. The challenge is yours to tell your story in a convincing manner.
There is a difference between data that can be used for creating models that will predict an outcome with perfect accuracy, and models that will guess. While one can calculate the exact point at which a projectile will touch the ground based on a general knowledge of physics, one can only guess what a student might prefer based on his or her characteristics. Know the difference and use your data properly.
If you are not ready to make a decision, tell your team that you are not prepared to act. They will respect the approach and follow your lead, as long as they know you will not waste their time.