SC 017 — Analytics Arcade: Applying the Great Game of Business for a High Score

Summary

The founder’s biggest career analytics win, told through Jack Stack’s Great Game of Business framework. At a 30-year-old tech company with a fragmented “zoo” of animal-branded products, a small task force selected Net New MRR (Land + Expand - Downgrade - Churn) as the single unifying metric. They ran an internal roadshow — monthly all-hands, lunch-and-learns, department-level meetings — to teach every team how their work connected to the metric.

Dashboards became business scoreboards. Seven production systems were integrated. Sales restructured into “hunter” (acquisition) and “farmer” (expansion) teams. Support launched proactive “churn-buster” initiatives. Leadership aligned bonuses and equity to MRR growth. During acquisition due diligence, the data team’s ability to trace everything back to Net New MRR provided buyer confidence. The company closed at unicorn valuation, creating approximately 70 millionaires.

Key Arguments

• One metric to rule them all: Net New MRR unified a fragmented org
• Know & Teach the Rules — understanding without education is incomplete
• Follow the Action & Keep Score — dashboards as business scoreboards, not just reporting tools
• Provide a Stake in the Outcome — alignment of incentives with the critical metric
• Data practitioners are essential at every stage: defining metrics, educating, building dashboards, maintaining stability, forecasting
• The data engineering foundation is the “OS layer” of organizational analytics

Writing Style Notes

This is the strongest article in the collection. Narrative-driven, high-stakes, personally meaningful. The Great Game framework gives structure without feeling forced. The unicorn exit validates the approach without being the point — the point is that analytics can be the backbone of organizational transformation.

Connections

• 06-reference/2026-04-03-the-great-game-of-business — direct application of Stack’s framework
• 01-projects/newsletter/index — part of the Sanity Check body of work
• 06-reference/2026-04-03-scaling-data-informed-driven-led — organizational data maturity at its peak
• 06-reference/concepts/systems-over-goals — the MRR system produced alignment as a byproduct, not as a target
• 06-reference/concepts/analytics-as-craft — the strongest proof-of-craft story in the collection
• 06-reference/2026-04-03-saas-metrics-that-matter — Net New MRR as the canonical SaaS metric
• 06-reference/2026-04-03-reforge-retention-is-the-output — churn component of Net New MRR is retention in action