Using Data To Win

Figuring out how to make sense of the data and what actions you can drive from it is something I enjoy doing. Once as an athlete and now in business.

Shane Battier recently discussed his use of data in basketball. It was incredible.

This quote stood out to me most:

I prepared smarter. Look, it was a big learning curve to understand analytics, understand the trade-offs between, okay, allowing a corner 3-point shot was worth 1.2 points and allowing a 3-pointer from the top of the wing that's 1.1. So we're talking hundreds of points here, tens of points. Once I understood sort of the rubric of where all the trade-offs were, I knew exactly where to look in a scouting report.

So I can get 30 pages of scouting report. And in 10 to 15 minutes before a game, I had my routine and I can distill all of that information and apply it. So I wasn't reinventing the wheel every single night. There were some certain no-nos that were stock, don't foul anybody. Don't give them a transition shot, don't allow them an open 3-point shot. Okay. Across the board, any NBA player, that's where they really, really hurt you.

Now you get into the nuance of, look, I knew when Kobe Bryant went to his left hand, it was a 42% shot. But when he went to his right hand, it was a 62% shot. So understanding to that granular level of advantage, it pays off. I knew that. And so I was always voracious about left-right splits and jump shop splits, I wanted the fire hose, and I knew after much practice what was applicable and what wasn't. And I wasn't very fast, but my skill was, I could think every single play.

I could think every single second, and that sounds kind of stupid but my awareness of where I was in the court, who I was guarding, what the game situation was, was something that came very, very natural to me. And I was able to leverage that to create huge, huge advantages when I was in the court.

But why does there tend to be a lot of distain towards data across business leaders and athletes? In general it boils down to thinking your intuition and the data are rivals. I think of it like this – data helps inform your decisions and intuition drives them.

Take Amazon for example, they're widely known as a data-driven company. When you look deeper and read the shareholder letters, they operate as a data-informed company.

What's the difference?

Some decisions should be made with your gut.

"If you wait for 90 percent of the information you wish you had, in most cases, you’re probably being slow." - Jeff Bezos

The common trait of successful teams and organizations is they want to know and understand the data, as Shane mentioned, "I wanted the firehose." They're willing to experiment and be curious about it. If you have that you're ahead of the game.

Here's my hierarchy for building this muscle:

1. Data

Where is the information stored, is it clean, and how can we extract it?

2. Insights

What is the data trying to say? Is it good or bad? Do we know?

3. Action

What steps can we take to improve?

If you can figure out analyzing the data and marry it with storytelling you've got one of the most dangerous superpower combos in the business world. Those two skills underpin virtually every aspect of a business: fundraising, recruiting, team management, product development, selling, and marketing.