The Data Leader’s Story

Every data leader tells the same story to the outside world.
“We work data-driven.”

And they believe it. Genuinely.

But step through the mirror and a very different world appears:

A gut feeling culture that overrides every dashboard. A resistance spider quietly killing every initiative before it scales. And somewhere in the corner… the Monster of Data Lakeness. Laughing. Sitting in a lake full of data nobody ever uses.

This is not a technology problem.
This is not a budget problem.
This is a leadership reality problem.

The gap between the story and the mirror exists in almost every organisation. And it grows every year that nobody names it.

So here are the monsters worth naming:

• Gut Feeling Culture, decisions that bypass data because “we’ve always done it this way” or “I know our customers.”
• Resistance, the silent killer. People who nod in the meeting and ignore the dashboard after.
• The Monster of Data Lakeness, the data lake that was supposed to unlock everything. Now it’s a swamp of unused datasets and forgotten projects.

The first step to fixing your data culture is not a new tool.
It’s looking in the mirror and naming what you see.

Want more drawings like this? Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one.