Data and Intuition in Leadership at Powerverse
At Powerverse, we’ve been working to build an optimal grasp of how we make decisions for a couple of years now. This is what I’ve learned.
We are building a business in a new market, and decisions come thick and fast. Some are big and strategic; others are small but recurring. All of them matter because they shape the culture and direction of the company. At Powerverse, we try to get better at how we make those decisions. We try to bring structure through dashboards and metrics that give us visibility. But we also rely on something harder to measure: intuition — the lived sense of judgement that leaders develop over time, sharpened through dialogue.
It hasn’t been a neat process. It’s a continuum. We began with rough, scrappy attempts to pin down what we needed to look at. Over time, those efforts have matured into more stable touchstones — the things we can now routinely come back to. Alongside that, we’ve had to figure out how to use intuition in the right way: not as a substitute for data, but as a complement to it. Together, these two forces — data and intuition — are shaping the way we lead Powerverse.
From First Drafts to Working Touchstones
The reality of building dashboards is that the first versions are never elegant. Every leader has their own view of what matters most. Each person wants to see their slice of the business reflected back in the numbers. That’s normal — and it’s human.
Our job in leadership has been to get those different perspectives into the open and then start converging on common ground. The first drafts were messy. They contained duplication, blind spots, and competing definitions. But they were valuable because they gave us something to react to. From there, through dialogue and iteration, those rough dashboards have slowly turned into touchstones: common points of reference that everyone in the leadership team can stand behind.
These touchstones aren’t perfect. They’re not yet the single backbone of the business. But they are a shared language. And the act of working them out together has been just as important as the numbers themselves.
Always a Work in Process
We are much closer today to getting it “mostly right” than we were at the start, but this will always be a work in process. The business is evolving, and so the information we need to lead it evolves too.
What has improved is the reduction in divergence. In the past, each leader could have their own version of the truth, drawn from their own spreadsheets or interpretations. Now, we are closer to alignment. Not because we have found perfection, but because we’ve stuck with the process of aligning, refining, and agreeing what matters.
The real aim is to stop every leader having their own truth. That requires effort, dialogue, and sometimes compromise. But it’s the only way to lead a business together.
Dialogue Brings Dry Data to Life
Dashboards on their own are dry. They are just numbers. What makes them meaningful is the dialogue we build around them.
In our leadership meetings, we try to use the dashboards as a starting point. We ask: what patterns are we seeing? What feels surprising? Where do we need to dig deeper? That dialogue is what brings the business into plain sight. It is what gives shape and meaning to otherwise flat data.
The cadence matters too. By returning to the same touchstones regularly, we give ourselves a rhythm. Each time, we see a little more, spot new patterns, or notice changes that weren’t obvious before. It’s through this recursive process — looking again, learning again, adjusting again — that leadership happens.
Intuition: Seeing the Whole
If data gives us the parts, intuition helps us see the whole.
Intuition is not a guess. It is the gestalt — the overall picture that emerges when you bring together experience, memory, and subtle signals. It reframes what we are looking at. It uncovers new perceptions that might otherwise be hidden in plain sight.
From that reframing, the rational mind can generate new hypotheses. Those hypotheses can then be tested against the data. But the spark comes first from intuition — the ability to know before you can explain.
Timing is part of this too. Intuition carries with it a sense of when to act, drawn from past experience of patterns repeating. That sense of timing, when combined with the visibility of the dashboards, makes us more effective as decision makers.
Pattern Recognition and Reframing
Pattern recognition sits at the intersection of data and intuition.
The data provides repetition — signals that occur again and again. Intuition makes sense of those signals, reframing them into new meaning. The process is not linear; it’s iterative. Intuition reframes, the rational mind hypothesises, data validates or disproves, and intuition deepens in turn.
This loop is what matures both our dashboards and our leadership. Over time, we become better at spotting the signals that matter and ignoring the noise.
The Payoff of Maturity
Where we are now feels like a middle stage. Our dashboards are more mature. Our intuition is more integrated into how we discuss and decide. And our conversations as a leadership team are more grounded.
We’re not finished, and we won’t ever be. But the difference now is that the work is compounding. The investment of effort in those messy first drafts, and in the repeated cycles of dialogue, has paid back in trust — in the numbers, in each other, and in our ability to navigate forward together.
That trust is not automatic. We try to earn it, maintain it, and rebuild it when it falters. It is fragile, but it is also the foundation of everything else.
The Balance We Strive For
Decision-making at Powerverse rests on two counterweights: data for consistency, intuition for wisdom. Neither on its own is enough. Together, they allow us to spot what matters and act in time.
This isn’t a framework. It’s a practice. A practice of building touchstones, using them in dialogue, reframing through intuition, and returning again and again to refine.
That’s how we are building Powerverse. Not with certainty, but with a maturing balance of data and intuition — and a shared commitment to keep learning how to decide well.