The sting of the paper cut on my index finger is a sharp, pulsing distraction, a reminder that even the most mundane physical interactions-like opening a manila envelope containing 58 pages of quarterly projections-can result in unexpected trauma. It is a localized, stinging reality. Yet, looking at the spreadsheet Greg is projecting onto the wall of the boardroom, that pain doesn’t exist. According to his data, my physical output for the day is at 98% efficiency. The paper cut is an outlier, a non-event, a rounding error in the grand architecture of the ‘Single Source of Truth’ he claims to have perfected. Greg is the VP of Sales, and he is currently wielding a Salesforce dashboard like a blunt instrument, claiming we hit 488 new account activations this month. Across the table, Sarah from Marketing is shaking her head so vigorously I’m worried she’ll catch a neck cramp. Her HubSpot dashboard says 388. Somewhere in the cloud, the PostgreSQL database is whispering 418.

We have spent the last 48 minutes of this 58-minute meeting arguing about which number is ‘Real.’ It is a classic corporate ritual, a liturgical dance performed in front of the altar of the Single Source of Truth (SSOT). We have been told for 18 years that if we just integrate our stacks tightly enough, if we just find that one magical master record, we will finally achieve a state of organizational nirvana where everyone sees the same world. But here’s the thing Greg won’t admit, and Sarah hasn’t realized yet: the Single Source of Truth is a mythological distraction. It is a lie we tell ourselves to avoid the much more difficult task of managing conflicting, yet equally valid, perspectives.

The Graveyard of Context

We are fighting over the map because we are too afraid to explore the territory. The territory is messy. The territory includes the fact that a ‘lead’ means something fundamentally different to a person trying to hit a quarterly quota than it does to a person trying to optimize a Facebook ad spend. When Greg says we have 488 new accounts, he’s counting every signed contract, even the ones that haven’t passed the credit check. When Sarah says 388, she’s only counting the ones that came through her specific attribution funnel. They are both ‘true’ within the context of their specific missions. The problem arises when we try to force these two distinct realities into a single cell in a master spreadsheet. We end up with a number that satisfies no one and informs nothing.

I’ve seen this play out 28 times in the last three companies I’ve consulted for. We invest millions in ‘Data Warehousing’ and ‘Master Data Management’ (MDM), thinking that if we can just pipe everything into Snowflake, the contradictions will evaporate. Instead, we just create a more expensive place to argue. The warehouse becomes a graveyard of context. We strip away the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ until we are left with a skeleton of ‘what,’ and then we wonder why the business feels dead. We are attempting to centralize truth, but in a corporate environment, truth is not a destination; it is a negotiation. By centralizing it, we are really just deciding which department’s worldview gets to dominate the others. If the SSOT is owned by Sales, then Marketing’s nuances are erased. If it’s owned by Finance, then the messy, human reality of Customer Success is filtered out.

Building Windows, Not Tearing Down Walls

This is why I find the modern obsession with ‘killing silos’ so misguided. Silos exist for a reason. They are specialized environments where specific types of work get done. A mattress tester needs a different set of data than a mattress salesperson. The solution isn’t to tear down the walls and force everyone to stand in one giant, confusing room. The solution is to build better windows. We need systems that acknowledge the existence of multiple truths and provide the translation layer necessary to make sense of them. This is where the narrative shifts from ‘Source of Truth’ to ‘Source of Meaning.’

The Value of the Gap

I think back to that paper cut. It’s a tiny, insignificant detail in the context of our 88-million-dollar annual revenue. But for me, in this moment, it is the most important data point in the room. It’s affecting my grip, my mood, and the way I’m typing this very sentence. Since the SSOT can’t account for it, it is by definition an incomplete map.

When we stop chasing the ghost of a perfect, unified data set, we can start focusing on what actually matters: synchronization. I don’t need Greg and Sarah to agree on the number of leads. I need them to understand why their numbers are different and what that tells us about the health of the business. If Marketing sees 388 and Sales sees 488, the ‘truth’ isn’t one of those numbers, or even the average of the two.

The gap is the most valuable piece of data in the company, yet the quest for a Single Source of Truth tries to eliminate it.

We’ve spent 158 minutes this week alone in these ‘reconciliation’ meetings. That is time we could have spent actually talking to customers or, in my case, ensuring that the 2028 model of the ‘Deep Sleep Deluxe’ doesn’t cause chronic lower back pain for people over six feet tall. Instead, we are digital janitors, scrubbing the ‘errors’ out of our databases because we’ve been told that a clean dashboard is the same thing as a successful company. It isn’t. I’ve seen companies with pristine, perfectly synced data go bankrupt in 18 months because they were so focused on the internal consistency of their map that they didn’t notice the bridge in the real world had washed away.

We need to embrace the plurality of data. We need to accept that the ‘Sales Truth,’ the ‘Marketing Truth,’ and the ‘Accounting Truth’ are all legitimate perspectives. The goal of leadership shouldn’t be to pick a winner; it should be to act as the ultimate integrator. It’s about creating a culture where a 108-unit discrepancy isn’t a cause for a witch hunt, but an invitation for a conversation about how we define our world.