Statistician Nate Silver first drew attention for his work in predicting statistical outcomes in Major League Baseball, before Moneyball made it fashionable to do so. More recently, Silver shifted his focus to politics, using data to predict recent election results with uncanny success. In his new bestselling book, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – but Some Don’t, Silver examines the challenges of prediction in identifying the useful information and correct answers to a problem (the “Signal”) while ignoring the irrelevant data and incorrect answers (the “Noise”).
I believe trying to find the signal in the midst of a sea of noise is pivotal challenge faced by senior athletic administrators today, especially with the significant workload athletics administrators are managing. 1 How do you sift through all the noise to find the important information and optimal solutions to key challenges faced, especially outside your traditional network? 2 And, how do you find time to step back from your job and the details that surround it in order to analyze important issues, to study the industry and related industries beyond the bubble of your own athletic department, and to think critically?
This is the nature of the profession. The challenge here is how do you rise above this busyness to find the time to reflect, analyze, and think? In his landmark book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, one of Stephen Covey’s key principles was “Put First Things First.” Covey’s lesson here was to focus your time and energy on the most important tasks rather than the most urgent tasks. I struggle with this every day and you likely do as well. I’ve got an e-mail inbox full of requests for immediate responses, not to mention a number of other requests on my voice mail and now even the text message inbox on my phone. It’s natural to focus on the easy ones to feel as if I’m making progress at paring down the list or to spend time on those with the most immediate deadlines, rather than asking which are the most important to the organization and making those the top priority with my time and attention.
My colleagues Rick Burton and Norm O’Reilly recently wrote on bridging the divide between research and practice in the January 21-27 (2013) issue of Sports Business Journal (subscription required). It is a topic I’ve been preaching about for years, feeling strongly that getting analytically-minded industry professional together with applied scholars can produce a rich discussion of best practices in the industry, and more sound research to better inform those practices. The Win AD Think Tank will be that forum. With this focus in mind, I’ll be sharing ideas in blog posts and original research on this web site in the months ahead.
References:
- This is the nature of the profession. The challenge here is how do you rise above this busyness to find the time to reflect, analyze, and think? In his landmark book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, one of Stephen Covey’s key principles was “Put First Things First.” Covey’s lesson here was to focus your time and energy on the most important tasks rather than the most urgent tasks. I struggle with this every day and you likely do as well. I’ve got an e-mail inbox full of requests for immediate responses, not to mention a number of other requests on my voice mail and now even the text message inbox on my phone. It’s natural to focus on the easy ones to feel as if I’m making progress at paring down the list or to spend time on those with the most immediate deadlines, rather than asking which are the most important to the organization and making those the top priority with my time and attention. ↩
- This relates to another challenge for senior athletics administrators: the “athletics bubble.” When I ask athletic administrators, particularly athletic directors, what they do in their limited free time and who they spend that time with, family typically comes first, followed by friends. Often times, those friends are people connected to athletics in some manner. Athletic directors’ friends are often their co-workers, athletic donors, and/or other administrators on campus. If you work in a demanding job and spend much of your limited free time with those connected to your job, how do you escape that bubble? ↩
