Why do the numbers judge you - but don’t obey you?
Marketing performance, budgets, strategy decisions — all evaluated through numbers. Yet the rules behind those numbers often sit elsewhere: analytics, product, data teams.
The CMO owns the outcome, not the logic. Where does vulnerability come from?
Responsibility and influence are split. You’re accountable for results, but you don’t control:
• metric definitions
• attribution windows
• sources of truth
• interpretation rules
That gap creates constant risk exposure. What’s usually misattributed to “bad data”?
The issue isn’t data quality. It’s broken governance. When responsibility exceeds authority, trust in analytics collapses by design.
How I’ve seen this fixed?
The CMO’s management scope must include metrics: definitions, windows, truth sources, interpretation rules. Responsibility without influence is a liability. With influence, it becomes leadership.
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