As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein
What in the world was Einstein on when he, the greatest scientist of the 20th century, made that statement? Imagine him telling a corporate CFO, after reading a company financial statement, or a typical senior marketing VP, after looking over a numbers-studded proposal for a new marketing campaign, "Your numbers do not refer to reality."
What Einstein was pointing out, of course, is that numbers are only symbols and the picture they add up to is a made-up picture, not a real picture. Judiciously speaking, a numbers-rendered picture is at best an approximation that inevitably omits important details.
In The Loyalty Effect, Frederick Reichheld issues a scathing rebuke of management by numbers, at least by the numbers that many MBAs in finance love with near superstitious aplomb. He observes in a discussion of State Farm—whose worker, agent, and customer loyalty is probably without surpass in the insurance industry, and which in Reichheld’s view is why State Farm insures over 20 percent of American households—that its competitors can’t fathom how State Farm has become such a power-house. Reichheld explains why: "We all use mental models to sort out relevant information from noise and then organize that information into useful patterns. When these models are accounting paradigms, managers quite simply cannot grasp the economics of learning and loyalty that sustains State Farm’s success. They may listen to [State Farm founder] Mecherle’s words, but they fail to hear his message."(Italics added.) Pure and simple, State Farm operates from a different consciousness than nearly all of its competition does. Operating from an accounting-defined consciousness, it is impossible for competitors to see what State Farm’s management sees with great clarity.
This article begins with the objective of doing no less than plotting the path toward a new consciousness that will clear away a numbers-saturated fog that obscures a clear-eyed view of why marketing has been grossly underperforming and defining what is necessary to identify and implement solutions of the problem in the era of the New Customer Majority.