Data was in the middle of my flywheel. Right there in my face... but I didn’t register it.”

A seasoned CIO told me this — mid-conversation — while pulling up a slide of the flywheel he'd been presenting to his staff for the past eight months.

And there it was.
A clear flywheel model... with a core, surrounding actions, and — behind it all — a massive circle labeled “data.”

It was both glaringly obvious — the circle was huge — and strangely subtle:
data was everywhere, but only as a byproduct... not a strategic intention.

Like a fish unaware of the water it swims in.

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We spoke about how data is often in play, but rarely in focus.

That’s the blind spot I see in many flywheels and strategies.
Data isn’t missing... it’s everywhere.
But like any plentiful resource, it often gets mismanaged or misplaced.
It becomes support material... not structural force.

Too often, we treat data as operational noise, not as a directional signal.
We harvest it without aiming it.
We assume it’s infinitely renewable... but it’s not.
Pollution, fragmentation, and inaction all take their toll.

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I’ve long been a fan of the flywheel model Jim Collins describes in Good to Great.

You pick the long-term outcome you want to drive.
That becomes your flywheel’s center... the axis of momentum.
Then you choose 3–5 reinforcing actions that help spin it faster over time.

It’s a powerful model.
But here’s where most flywheels fall apart:

Without feedback, you're just applying force... not building momentum.
That’s where data belongs... not on the side, but in the loop.

Not as a dashboard.
Not as a vanity report.
But as a feedback loop... a force multiplier.

When data is wired into the right loop, it accelerates the system.
But only if it’s aimed with intent.

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And that’s where many teams fall into the trap:

They invest in data, but forget what they’re trying to move.
They spend heavily on infrastructure — data lakes, pipelines, reporting tools — without anchoring it to the business.
Without asking: Why?
What are we trying to move? Improve? Decide?

At one of my clients, we used to joke:

“From an IT perspective, data science has been a complete failure.
We don’t even have one model running in production.

But from a business perspective, it’s been priceless.
We understood, solved, and improved so many core processes...
that by the time we finished, we no longer needed a model.”

That’s not a tech story.
That’s a strategy story.

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Back to the CIO.

We agreed to start building a Data & Analytics team... but this time, aligned to strategy from day one.
We began treating data as the nervous system of the business, not just its echo.

We clarified which actions we wanted to amplify.
We identified strategic friction points: legacy systems that slowed us down, teams that needed re-skilling.

And we rewired the system.
Not into dashboards, but into decision cycles.

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Clarity isn’t just vision... it’s what makes the flywheel spin true.

If your strategy has motion but no momentum,
your flywheel might be missing a signal system.

👉 I help data and strategy leaders rewire for clarity, alignment, and action.
Let’s explore how.