"What's our customer acquisition cost by segment?"
The CEO looked at the CFO. The CFO looked at the VP of Sales. The VP of Sales looked at the table.
"We can get that to you by next week."
Third time that meeting. By the fourth "I'll get back to you," the lead investor stopped asking questions. Not because he'd run out. Because he'd lost confidence that anyone in the room knew how the business worked.
I was sitting in the corner taking notes. The company had $47M in revenue, 180 employees, and a Series C that closed eight months prior. They could tell you their NPS score to two decimal places. They had no idea which customers made them money.
The Archaeology Problem
Every critical question becomes a dig.
"Can we afford this hire?" Three days and four spreadsheets later, you get a qualified maybe. "What's our runway if we miss plan?" A week of modeling that's already stale by the time it's done. "Which product line should we kill?" Nobody knows, so nothing dies, and everything starves.
The questions aren't hard. The answers exist—scattered across seven systems that don't talk to each other, in spreadsheets that only one person understands, buried in reports that were accurate three weeks ago.
You're not stupid. You're structurally blind.
What This Actually Costs
The CEO I mentioned? His board started losing faith during that meeting. Not over the numbers—over the hesitation. Two quarters later, they replaced him. The numbers were fine. The confidence gap wasn't.
That's the thing about blank stares. The damage isn't the missing answer. It's what the missing answer signals.
To your board: Maybe leadership doesn't have a grip on this business.
To your team: Maybe we're guessing more than we're managing.
To yourself, at 2am: Maybe I don't actually know what's happening here.
The cost isn't embarrassment. It's compounding uncertainty. One question you can't answer leads to three more you're afraid to ask.
The Pattern
Every company with blank stare problems looks the same under the hood:
Data exists everywhere and nowhere. CRM says one thing. Accounting says another. That spreadsheet the VP maintains says a third. Everyone has numbers. Nobody has the same numbers.
Reports face backward. You can see what happened. You can't see what it means. Last month's P&L is an autopsy, not a diagnosis.
Knowledge lives in heroes. Sarah knows where everything is. She works 60-hour weeks. She hasn't taken a real vacation in two years. When Sarah leaves—and she will—you're blind.
This isn't a technology problem. We've never had more dashboards. It's an architecture problem. The pipes don't connect.
The Questions That Expose It
Try answering these with data you'd bet money on:
What's your CAC by channel? Not blended. By channel.
Which customers are actually profitable? After fully-loaded cost to serve?
What happens to runway if you miss plan by 20%?
If any of those took more than a minute, that's the gap.
If any required "let me check with finance," that's the gap.
If any you simply can't answer—that's the gap that's going to bite you. Maybe not today.
What Changes
Intelligence Rhythm is the third thing we install, after Foundation Rhythm creates visibility and Planning Rhythm creates foresight.
It's not a dashboard project. Dashboards are usually part of the problem—another place to look, another version of the truth, another thing nobody uses after the first month.
Intelligence Rhythm is the infrastructure that makes any question answerable in the room where it's asked.
Real-time unit economics. Profitability by customer, by product, by segment. Forward indicators that show what's coming, not just what happened.
The specifics vary by business. The outcome doesn't: you stop dreading the questions.
The Uncomfortable Part
Most CEOs I work with have known about their blank stare problem for a while. They've felt the pause before saying "I'll get back to you." They've watched opportunities pass while waiting for data that should've been instant.
The discomfort isn't admitting the problem. It's admitting how long they've tolerated it.
I don't have a clean resolution for that. Some gaps you just have to decide to close.
