"What is your deepest fear?"

The above line, written originally by Marianne Williamson and famously quoted in the movie Coach Carter (RICH-WHATTT?), has reverberated in my head, throughout my inbox, and in the pages of my black spiral notebook over the past few months.

Our Chief Data Strategy Officer, Cindi Howson, wrote a post last week that asked "How Fearless Are You In Your Analytics Journey?" - which sparked me to finally try to figure out why. But first, go read Cindi's post. Seriously, it's great.

Unlike Cindi, I am brand-new to the data and analytics space, so this concept of data as a scary resource has baffled me.

As both a business user hungry for insights into my customers and prospects and a millennial used to the ease of answering just about any question I've ever had via Google (most recently "how do you re-light the pilot light in your water heater?"), I genuinely could not understand why any organization wouldn't leap at the opportunity to empower with data.

After reading Cindi's post and reflecting on the conversations I've had every day since joining ThoughtSpot six months ago, the fear gripping many data-driven initiatives became more apparent.

For those of you yelling "it's the data quality, stupid!" from your desk chairs, slow down, that's not where we're going. While data governance and cleanliness will always present a challenge, the inadequacy of our data represents the "darkness" Williamson references - that is, the assumed fear, not the real one.

Instead, I believe, our deepest fear is that data is powerful beyond measure.

It's the Pandora's box within every organization that, understandably, generates as much fear as it does excitement. It can shed light on poor decisions by senior leadership, empower subordinates to question expertise and experience, reveal startling trends driven by a culture of "how we've always done it," and completely dissolve the nice, neat silos that corporate America has built over the past two generations.

For all of the same reasons I, the millennial business user who has to Google "why does my dryer smell like it's burning?" (it's been quite a week at the Tecce house) crave more access to data, I have a much better understanding since joining this space why that represents such a powerful shift in how data has been treated within the Global 2000...well, forever.

With all of this in mind, though - what happens if your business users remain at mercy of a broken information delivery process? Expectations have increased across the board in the B2C world, and B2B is finally catching up. Consider this line from a recent Bain article:

In a world where you can track the status of your $10 pizza from your phone, most chemicals customers still don’t know when their $50,000 shipment will arrive.

Your customers don't care that it takes you 4.8 days to get a report returned, or that your dashboard doesn't answer their particular question.

Your employees don't care about your enterprise architecture standard if it doesn't allow them to work at the speed they need to.

Your potential employees will be more interested in ever in which tools you provide (or don't provide) to ensure they're set up for success.

So, as scary as the idea is of providing access at the speed of a Google search or the push of a notification on your iPhone, the greater fear lies in the question "What happens if we don't?"

I have a tremendous amount of empathy for the data leaders we speak with every day who wrestle with this fear vs. opportunity. Take a deep breath, go read Cindi's post, and..."Ready, Set, Jump!"