The Data Made the Decision

Most CEOs think they need more courage. What they actu­al­ly need is more visibility.

In 1995, a geog­ra­phy teacher named John McLean joined Bund­aberg Brewed Drinks — a fam­i­ly-owned gin­ger beer com­pa­ny in Queens­land, Aus­tralia. He had no brew­ing back­ground. No oper­a­tions expe­ri­ence. What he did have was a knack for tech­nol­o­gy, and his father-in-law saw potential.

In his first 30 days, John imple­ment­ed an ERP sys­tem. The data that came out of it was, in his words, bru­tal. It revealed that Bund­aberg was spend­ing most of its mon­ey and ener­gy dis­trib­ut­ing oth­er com­pa­nies’ brands. They were essen­tial­ly run­ning a logis­tics oper­a­tion for their com­peti­tors while their own brand — the one that actu­al­ly had some­thing spe­cial — was being starved of resources.

So they made a deci­sion that looked, from the out­side, like an act of extra­or­di­nary boldness.

They turned off one-fifth of their rev­enue overnight.

Courage or Clarity?

When peo­ple hear this sto­ry, they tend to frame it as a coura­geous move. And it was. But I’d push back on the word coura­geous being the pri­ma­ry dri­ver here.

The deci­sion was made because the data made it impos­si­ble to ignore. It was­n’t a gut call or a vision state­ment. It was arith­metic. Once you could see what was actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing — where the mon­ey was going, what the mar­gin looked like on the dis­tri­b­u­tion arm ver­sus the brand­ed prod­ucts — the path for­ward became obvious.

That’s the dis­tinc­tion most lead­ers miss. They think the hard part is hav­ing the courage to act. In my expe­ri­ence, the hard part is build­ing the sys­tems that make the truth vis­i­ble in the first place.

The Vis­i­bil­i­ty Problem

I’ve spent thir­ty years sit­ting in rooms with tal­ent­ed CEOs who are mak­ing deci­sions large­ly in the dark. They have rev­enue num­bers. They have a sense of what’s work­ing. They have instincts sharp­ened by years of experience.

But they rarely have the kind of clear, unam­bigu­ous data that makes a hard deci­sion feel inevitable rather than terrifying.

Here’s what that costs them: they delay deci­sions that are obvi­ous in ret­ro­spect. They keep prod­ucts, cus­tomers, or rev­enue lines alive far longer than they should because nobody has done the work to see them clear­ly. They opti­mize for the feel­ing of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty rather than the real­i­ty of performance.

In com­pa­ny after com­pa­ny, I’ve watched lead­ers con­fuse activ­i­ty with clar­i­ty. They’re busy. They’re work­ing hard. But with­out vis­i­bil­i­ty into where val­ue is actu­al­ly being cre­at­ed — and where it’s being destroyed — they can’t make the deci­sions that matter.

What Bund­aberg Did Right

The deci­sion to shut down 20% of rev­enue had con­se­quences. Lay­offs were unavoid­able. The busi­ness went back­ward for six months. Nobody cel­e­brates that.

But here’s what John McLean under­stood that many CEOs don’t: the pain of a clear deci­sion, made fast, is almost always less than the slow bleed of a deci­sion you already know you need to make but keep postponing.

By turn­ing off the dis­tri­b­u­tion arm, Bund­aberg freed up the resources to prop­er­ly build and mar­ket their own brand. The rev­enue they gave up, they made back — and then some. By 2012, they crossed $100 mil­lion. By 2025, rev­enue had grown 61.9% above their 2019 base­line. Today they sell in more than 60 countries.

None of that hap­pens with­out an ERP sys­tem installed in the first 30 days on the job.

None of it hap­pens with­out the will­ing­ness to look at what the data is actu­al­ly saying.

The Ques­tion to Ask Yourself

What in your busi­ness are you run­ning on instinct that deserves a clos­er look?

Not because the instinct is wrong. But because instinct and data togeth­er are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more pow­er­ful than either one alone. The lead­ers who grow the fastest aren’t the ones who act bold­ly on gut feel. They’re the ones who build sys­tems that give them the clar­i­ty to act deci­sive­ly — and act early.

John McLean made a bold deci­sion in his first 30 days at Bund­aberg. But the real sto­ry isn’t the deci­sion. It’s the ERP sys­tem he installed before he made it.

Most CEOs don’t have a courage prob­lem. They have a vis­i­bil­i­ty problem.

The good news: vis­i­bil­i­ty is a sys­tem prob­lem. And sys­tems can be built.

Watch the full inter­view below or read more in our recent case study with Bund­aberg here.

Addi­tion­al Resources:

Arti­cles

• The KPIs That Actu­al­ly Dri­ve Growth
• Let the Right Num­bers Tell the Story
• Suc­ces­sion: Plan­ning & Ensur­ing the Future of a Business

Pod­cast

• Ep 36: How to Grow Your Busi­ness in a Boom­ing Mar­ket While Main­tain­ing Discipline

Case Study

• Bund­aberg: The Local Brew­er that Became a Glob­al Sensation

Book: The 4 Forces of Growth 

• 4 minute Overview
• 45 Minute Webinar
• Buy on Amazon

Book: Scal­ing Up

• 45 Minute Webinar
• Arti­cle: 10 Years After Scal­ing Up: What I’ve Learned About Growth

Book: Your Oxy­gen Mast First

• Assess your­self
• Resilience Webi­nar