David Abbott was one of the sharpest minds in advertising, and he used data all the time to create some of the world’s most successful campaigns (It’s Good To Talk…). Much of his data came in the form of stories, gained by listening to people.
He was still working when the age of ‘big data’ started to edge into his world. He summed up the miracle of modern communications like this:
“Shit that arrives at the speed of light is still shit when it gets there.”
It’s brutal. But it’s true. And the same applies in schools.
We love data. We need data. It makes decisions feel rational. It reassures governors. It supports funding applications. It fuels staff confidence. But all of that depends on one thing: whether the data is any good.
And too often, it’s not:
It’s the right answer to the wrong question.
It’s the consistent trend in maths scores that hides a tutoring spike.
It’s the “engagement” metrics that look amazing… until you notice that admissions haven’t changed since the fax machine days.
Faster just-in-time data presented in a slick dashboard can feel like progress. But if the inputs are flawed, the outputs are worse than useless: they’re misleading.
And when leadership teams are flat-out trying to survive the day, it’s tempting to let the shiny charts do the thinking for you.
So what does good data look like?
It looks like time. Time to listen, not just survey. Time to notice, not just audit. Time to sit with uncomfortable questions, not just skip to easy answers.
All of that takes guts, trust, and a shared culture of radical accountability that says: “if a problem belongs to our community, then it belongs to us all**.”**
The problem, of course, is that carving out that time to listening properly requires you to have a relentless focus on doing just that. Otherwise, when your calendar is stacked, your inbox is never empty, and your meetings are one long game of whack-a-mole, listening will always fall to the bottom of the pile.