📊 When the Data Speaks, Listen

Opening Insight

I’m always surprised when people claim to be “data-driven,” yet ignore the data when it doesn’t fit the narrative they’ve already decided is true.

It happens more often than we’d like to admit. Teams run the research, analyze the results, and then—when the findings challenge a favored idea—they quietly move the goalposts. Suddenly, data becomes optional.

But here’s the thing: the numbers don’t care about our opinions.

“2 + 2 = 4. Always has. Always will.”

That’s the beauty of data. It gives us clarity in a world full of noise. It’s not personal, it’s not political—it’s factual. And when used with discipline and intent, it becomes one of the most powerful competitive advantages a business can have.

The Discipline of Decision-Making

One of the most important responsibilities of any marketing executive is to leverage insights to make informed decisions—on messaging, investments, value propositions, channels, and audience engagement.

When you fail to use data purposefully, you don’t just risk inefficiency—you lose money, time, and talent.

Marketing is full of passionate people with strong instincts (and I count myself among them). But instinct without insight is just opinion. True leadership requires the humility to let the data guide the story, not the other way around.

Culture Eats Strategy — But Accountability Sustains Both

I once read a McKinsey article that said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” What they were really saying is that a tiger doesn’t change its stripes.
Long-standing behaviors—good or bad—are hard to break. And no matter how brilliant your strategy is, culture will always overpower it if accountability isn’t part of the DNA.

I’ve seen this play out many times in my career.

At one company, the CEO had a simple but powerful rule: no blaming across teams. If results fell short, every leader was expected to start with what they could control. That standard created clarity. It eliminated excuses. And it reinforced the idea that accountability is a shared value, not a selective one.

You didn’t fail the test because your roommate forgot to tell you the classroom changed—you failed because you skipped the class where that announcement was made.

If leadership allows you to blame the roommate, you’ll never diagnose what truly held you back. That’s not growth; that’s avoidance.

In another organization, I witnessed the opposite. Teams were quick to redirect accountability when results lagged. Underperformance became a collective excuse instead of a collective lesson. Unsurprisingly, those teams struggled to adapt, evolve, or innovate.

The difference between those two companies wasn’t just culture—it was accountability culture.

Data shows you what’s happening. Accountability determines what you do about it.

When Facts Meet Feelings

I was recently in conversation with several CMOs, and a common frustration emerged: the rise of what I call “factless decision-making.”
It’s when people make strategic calls based on perception, anecdote, or a loud voice in the room—rather than the evidence sitting right in front of them.

One leader summed it up perfectly:

“We’re swimming in information, but drowning in opinion.”

Humans crave confirmation more than correction. We all want to believe we’re right. But progress—real, scalable progress—comes when leaders are willing to challenge their own assumptions and be led by what the data reveals, not just what their gut prefers.

Data + Purpose + Accountability = Impact

Data alone isn’t enough. It’s what you do with it that counts. The best organizations connect data to purpose and accountability—using insights to sharpen storytelling, refine investments, and align teams around measurable outcomes.

• Data clarifies who your customers are and why they act.
• Analytics reveal where to invest your next marketing dollar.
• Accountability ensures you act on what you learn and take ownership of results.

When you combine those inputs, you don’t just optimize campaigns—you transform cultures. You create environments where curiosity, learning, and responsibility replace bias and blame.

That’s how marketing becomes a growth engine, not just a cost center.

Leadership Over Blame

The best marketing organizations already know how to use data.
The real challenge often lies across the broader ecosystem—where results depend on alignment, handoffs, and shared ownership.

In many companies, when targets are missed, the instinct is to look sideways rather than inward. It’s easy to question the message, the campaign, or the creative before asking harder questions about execution, timing, or clarity of strategy.

But true leadership resists that reflex. It recognizes that data is not a weapon—it’s a mirror.
It reflects what’s working and what isn’t, across every function.

Strong leaders don’t scapegoat. They diagnose.
They use data to understand, to realign, and to hold everyone—including themselves—accountable for results.

Because when accountability lives everywhere, blame doesn’t have to live anywhere.