When I retired from Holland America in September 2019 I took time to reflect and record some of the insights and lessons learned from 26 years in a high-pressure commercial arena. I had managed virtually every function related to demand generation – marketing, sales, revenue management and strategy/planning, in both domestic and international markets. I am a constant learner, but even with years of experience don’t consider myself a true expert at any one of these disciplines. I am more of a dot-connector, obsessed with the integrated, seamless whole, all driven by data and analytics. As my thinking and note-taking expanded, I added some structure, creating this list of principles that has gone through several iterations.

One thing I’ve learned and have been reminded of repeatedly is that in less-than-professional hands, big data can be a distraction, even downright dangerous. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen presentations given, and sometimes decision made, with corrupted, unvalidated, irrelevant, distorted, out-of-context, unannotated and misinterpreted information, a trend that seems to be accelerating directly proportionate to the quantity and complexity of raw data employed. Almost always, the cause can be found among the first six of my principles.

— Joe Slattery