Kevin Kelley is one of the most renowned high school football coaches in the country. In 18 years of coaching, he holds a record of 216-29-1. Before Coach Kelley came, Pulaski Academy had never been past the semifinals. Since, the school has won 9 state championships. Kevin Kelley has been named USA Today National Coach of the Year, has been featured in two ESPN stories, and is consulted by collegiate and professional coaches.

Coach Kelley is particularly known for not punting in games, attempting onside kicks after every score, and adding multiple pitches on plays. In other words, doing what others rarely attempt.

How did Coach Kelley come to his decisions? Data and analysis.

“I’d search everything I could on football coaching, and I saw this bootleg-looking video of a Harvard professor who’d analyzed every game in college football for three years, and determined you shouldn’t punt as much as you do, and that you should use the time you prepare for the punt to do other things,” Kelley said.

The statistics on his own teams validated the research: Teams still scored against them 71% of the time when they punted. Additionally, the statistics didn’t show a significant difference of result if the other teams started on the 30-yard line (traditional kick-off result) or at the 50-yard line if the onside kick attempt failed. Experience research also revealed that open-field tackles are the hardest play to make in football, and statistics showed that multiple touches per play resulted in the most open-field tackle opportunities.

Coach Kelley says that a hard look at the game is the only way to win and stay a winner.

As a CIO, you have known the value of data for a long time. Handled correctly, data results in efficiency and effectiveness, the ability to do better with the same amount of resources. Not only does data help us cut costs, it helps us to understand ever-changing business processes and keeps digital transformation efforts on the right course.

No one needs to convince you of the importance. Over 80% of respondents in one survey indicated that data was more important; one year ago, only 29% indicated that was so.

For the CIO to partner in business strategy, she must lead her peers and teams away from five mistakes often made in decision-making:

• Choosing style over substance

Research is the foundation of everything. Data provides an understanding and delivery purity of what is needed. Anything less are assumptions that miss the mark, tests that waste time and money, and results that are disappointing. And we have had enough disappointment. Style can range from anything to doing what has been done to adopting latest trends. Data is substance.

• Futile fighting

Business segments will stand on a model or action, and sometimes as a result of bad data. The CIO knows that their terrain is to provide not only data, but data that has been set up for success, gathered by best practices. Peet Laya of CXL Institute says, “Bad data renders all work useless.” The CIO ensures that the data being contested is the right data to be grappled with.

• Willful ignorance.
• Effective leaders look around the corner. Business decisions that are based on a “damn the torpedoes, full-speed ahead” approach fail to understand that business is no longer a predictable trajectory. Data provide the insights the CIO needs to wisely insert considerations into business strategies that aren’t taking less-visible scenarios into account. Without data, a CIO is left to convince others on the basis of hunch. That has never gotten you far. “Clarity trumps persuasion,” Dr. Flint McLaughlin says, and data is the clear lens.
• Chasing aberrations.
• Every industry has its aberrations. Too often, the aberration is showcased, attempts are made to replicate the model, and the results elsewhere not only fall short, but do harm. We hear that “normal isn’t working.” Most often, normal is just poorly informed. Data keeps your vision clear, your values in check, and your leaders on aim. There will be no end to changes made in light of data rightly analyzed; but rarely will a company be required to abandon who they are. We celebrate aberrations; we cultivate and continue on in data, analysis and our own transformation.
• Lazy thinking.
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in the Sherlock Holmes story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” wrote, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts.”

There is a major difference between anticipating what we need to know versus acquiring what we need to know. Lazy thinking anticipates. Comprehensive thinking acquires.

Really, the sum of these five mistakes is a failure of thought. As a CIO, you are a thought-architect. Your company seeks to do the best that they can with the information that they have. It is up to you to ensure that they both have the information, and know how to work with it.

This alone sets apart 2021 as a year of rebound, innovation and victory. So go ahead, fire the punter