{"id":959,"date":"2020-01-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/reports\/how-to-make-your-data-speak-to-the-decision-makers-at-your-organisation\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:12:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:12:23","slug":"data-visualisation","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/data-visualisation\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Make Your Data Speak to the Decision-Makers at your Organisation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n Jan 23, 2020 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

How to Make Your Data Speak to the Decision-Makers at your Organisation<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Data & Innovation<\/a> <\/div>\n
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https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/data-visualisation\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n
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Trust comes from data accessibility and a coach or athlete\u2019s sense that they remain in the driving seat.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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Data can be a valuable competitive advantage if you can get a team\u2019s decision-makers on your side.<\/h4>\n
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By John Portch<\/h6>\n

That is easier said than done for the data scientist in the face of, say, resistance from veteran coaches who place their not inconsiderable experience over your spreadsheet or when you have finally built a rapport with a head coach only to see them and their entire staff dismissed at the end of the season.<\/p>\n

That is all before we get on to the athletes who have little or no interest and, in some cases, may even be fearful that you have been sent with unfavourable numbers to undermine their negotiations for a new contract.<\/p>\n

At the Leaders Performance Institute, we have continually explored the ways that data scientists have found to present their findings as reinforcement tools for the intuition of coaches, athletes and front offices.<\/p>\n

Here, we bring you a selection of snippets from Manchester City, the University of Nebraska, the New Zealand women\u2019s rugby team, and the world of professional cycling.<\/p>\n

Simple data is the most powerful<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

For nearly five years Tucker Zeleny<\/u><\/a>\u00a0has served the 24 varsity teams of the University of Nebraska.<\/p>\n

As the school\u2019s first Director of Sports Analytics and Data Analytics he heads up the Nebraska Sports Analytics department, which, as its official website says: \u2018delivers insights and solutions through the collection, analysis and presentation of data.\u2019<\/p>\n

Zeleny and his colleagues have work with an inordinate number of coaches, athletes and support staff on a daily basis and each has their own views on the validity of sports data.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a challenge,\u201d he observed when talking to the Leaders Performance Institute. \u201cYou go through a couple of seasons with a coaching staff and gain a feel for what they want and once you\u2019ve built that trust you can get into a routine.\u201d<\/p>\n

A similar method has been adopted at the Manchester City Academy where teams range from boys aged nine and under through to the under-23s. \u201cWe take a different approach in every case,\u201d Nick Chadd,<\/u><\/a> Head of Sports Science at the Academy, told us. \u201cDon\u2019t forget that many coaches have a different background \u2013 so we have to be mindful of their understanding of data as well. Sometimes we assume they\u2019ve been party to the same background or exposed to the same line of data as a sports scientist and that often isn\u2019t the case. What I\u2019m finding is that the most powerful data is the most simple; it isn\u2019t always digestible for people and you cannot always see the wood for the trees when there\u2019s an abundance of data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Introduce stakeholders to a blend of inductive and deductive reasoning<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

It helps to have an understanding of the right questions with which to probe the numbers, as Robby Ketchell<\/u><\/a>, then working for Team Sky [and now Team Ineos] cycling as Chief Data Officer, told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cSport is in a situation where there is rich data, but poor hypotheses,\u201d he began. He explained that the data was good for deductive reasoning, which has its place because its allows the inquisitor to arrive at a conclusion without making any errors, but doesn\u2019t necessarily lead to the right questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t really understand what our questions are; we are trying to make something apparent that we don\u2019t really know about, like trying to solve a problem we don\u2019t know if it really exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was an absence of hypothesising, or inductive reasoning – the counterpart of the deductive approach.<\/p>\n

Consequently, Team Sky adopted a crowdsourcing approach that relied on public discussion to provide its hypotheses, which emboldened the team in pursuit of the right questions. \u201cWe based our decisions on the data we had available, prior knowledge and experience, and what we speculate will happen,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo the idea with the crowdsourcing technique in particular is to gather more data. Combining the experience and the data, we are looking to reduce the speculation, thus leading to better decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, Ketchell recommended a \u2018hybrid\u2019 approach leverages both the unbiased data and the intuition of Team Sky\u2019s experts.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cSo if you have a bunch of data you can use, how you can analyse it in a way to create these questions? How can you then ask questions that you can perform analytics on and come up with something that may be meaningful?<\/p>\n

\u201cI bring this up because one of the biggest problems that I encounter, is that if I have data, people expect that I am going to resolve the problem or it is going to replace their job, that they will no longer be the decision-maker. If you can show them that induction can actually help supplement their problem-solving process, then they will be more inclined to ask questions rather than ask \u2018what does the data say?\u201d<\/p>\n

As Chadd explained of the Manchester City Academy: \u201c[The coach] may want to come in and put their own slant on things and so the spine of alignment [across the academy] stays the same but they\u2019re able to divert off and explore something else at the same time in more depth and detail. They\u2019re absolutely allowed to do that and put their own individual flair on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Make the data relateable<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

Jamie Tout<\/u><\/a>, Strength & Conditioning Coach with the New Zealand women\u2019s World Cup-winning national rugby team, stressed to the Leaders Performance Institute that no data point can be considered in isolation if it is to resonate with a coach or player.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t go through a tick box exercise,\u201d said a professional who is not a data scientist but works in a data-rich role.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t just go \u2018you should do three gym sessions a week\u2019; you don\u2019t have to and sometimes you want to talk to the athlete about something, such as their sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

This can often lead to broader conversation, which, in Tout\u2019s case, could be the athlete\u2019s wellbeing. \u201cIt\u2019s all relative and so we have to make sure that none of our numbers are ever looked at isolation. The players these days have a real hunger to understand why we\u2019re doing things.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n

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Trust comes from data accessibility and a coach or athlete\u2019s sense that they remain in the driving seat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":960,"menu_order":0,"template":"","categories":[23],"pathway":[],"topic":[],"sport":[],"class_list":["post-959","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-innovation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow to Make Your Data Speak to the Decision-Makers at your Organisation - Performance Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/data-visualisation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Make Your Data Speak to the Decision-Makers at your Organisation - Performance Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Trust comes from data accessibility and a coach or athlete\u2019s sense that they remain in the driving seat.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/data-visualisation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Performance Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-15T05:12:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/app\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/08\/GettyImages-1188529904.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2040\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1093\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/data-visualisation\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/data-visualisation\/\",\"name\":\"How to Make Your Data Speak to the Decision-Makers at your Organisation - 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