There’s a stack of mail on my kitchen counter addressed to somebody I don’t recognize. It takes me a second every time. It’s my legal first name, and almost nobody who knows me has ever called me by it. To my wife, my son, my friends, and everyone I work with, I’m David.
Same man. Two names. The power company is sure it has me right. So is everyone who’s ever shaken my hand.
Anyone who has done master data management knows this problem. The same customer sits in five systems under five names. One calls it a customer number, one an account, one a sold-to. Every copy drifts toward what that system cares about. None of them is lying. They’re just local. The fix is a golden record, one authoritative version everything else points to. A good one doesn’t throw the other names away. It keeps them, and it knows which one comes first.
Organizations have the same problem with their purpose.
Ask five volunteers in a professional group why it matters, and you’ll often get five local copies. One says the drinks. One says the lunches. One says a break from the office. None of it is false. Each person builds their copy from the part they personally love most, because nobody handed them the sentence.
Why I show up
Community matters. I spent thirteen years in Toastmasters, and the people are a big part of why I stayed. But the lunch is how a group like this delivers what it offers. It isn’t the offer.
I go to get my thinking stretched, to learn what I don’t know, and to find people who’ve hit the same walls. We don’t trade company secrets. We trade practices. There’s real encouragement in learning that everyone runs into the same problems, and I want a framework to run them through. A happy hour can’t give me that.
The sentence
I’d rather help than heckle. I’ve sat through more conversations about what one word means than any person should. It turns out that’s a transferable skill.
If I were writing the golden record for a data group, it would take about thirty seconds to say:
- Education. We help you get better at the work.
- Partnership. We help you speak the business’s language, so the work gets funded and used.
- Standards. We carry the discipline forward, so data is fit for your company and for the AI being built on top of it.
And yes, we eat lunch together. The people in this room are the best part of the deal.
The mail on my counter still has the other name on it.
