7 Steps to Becoming a Data-Driven School

Learn to access the right data: the why (why do your students not get it?) and the how (how can you reteach content to stick?).

Source: 7 Steps to Becoming a Data-Driven School

I prefer the term data informed. No matter what the data tells you, sometimes you have to go with your gut reaction. There is a story about Intel’s former CEO, Paul Otellini and using data to make a decision to not supply a chip for the, at the time, unannounced iPhone.

At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought.”

It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini’s voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. “The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I’ve ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,” he said. “My gut told me to say yes.”