Why I Study Business and Marketing: A Mystery That Never Resolves

Business and marketing are like a good mystery plot, my favorite genre, from Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes to Christie’s Miss Marple. A good mystery has rules. In a well-crafted mystery, the clues are all there from the start, laid out fairly and governed by a logic the reader can trust, even before they understand it. What makes the genre work isn't the rules themselves; it's what a writer does inside them. Two authors can follow the exact same conventions and land in completely different places, because the solving is never mechanical. It's observational. It's noticing what's already in front of you and connecting it in a way no one else has yet.

Business and marketing, particularly product marketing, run on the same kind of structure. Positioning, audience, value, differentiation, these are the fixed rules of the genre. The conventions don’t change, and they shouldn't. But the audience changes. The channels change. The technology or product changes. So the same principles have to be re-solved constantly, for a new environment, against a new set of clues. And it’s the continually changing nature of marketing that I love so much.

The Instinct Underneath It

I've always been a process-driven, curious problem solver, adept at finding solutions to the seemingly impossible, including the broken VCR I took apart and put back together, working, at age eight. I think about that instinct more than the result. The eight-year-old me didn’t accept "it's broken" as an answer. I needed to know why, which means opening it up and carefully disassembling rather than tearing it apart to toss it aside. And underneath that is an assumption: the answer is probably already there, in the parts you're looking at, you just haven't arranged them right, bent them back into place, or found the crack or worn belt yet.

That's the same instinct I bring to a strategy problem now. The fix is rarely a brand-new tool nobody's thought of. More often, it's the data, the message, and the channel that have long been available, just never connected the right way. Problem solving, at its best, isn't invention. It's reassembly with a clearer view of how the pieces actually fit.

Strategy, Tactics, and Technology Aren't the Same Job

I love solving business and marketing problems by developing and innovating strategies, supported by tactics and technology solutions that achieve goals. Those three words get used almost interchangeably, but they're not doing the same work. Strategy answers why: the bet you're making, the outcome you're after. Tactics translate that bet into motion: the campaign, the sequence, the calendar. Technology is what lets it scale and be measured: the thing that turns a good idea into something repeatable.

Each layer is dependent on the one above it. Technology without strategy is just noise with good production value. Strategy without tactics is an opinion that never shipped. The work I find most satisfying happens at the seams, where a strategy has to survive contact with execution and prove it was actually right, not just well argued.

Leadership Is the Same Puzzle, Played Through Other People

As a leader, I pride myself on working alongside empowered, high-performing teams that deliver results. I'm passionate about identifying and channeling talent and fostering professional development opportunities. The longer I do this work, the more I see leadership as an extension of the same curiosity. The goal was never to be the one who solves every problem (that’s quite impossible). It's building a team that solves problems I'd never have thought to look for in the first place.

Finding that same curious thinker requires going beyond a resume. It shows in the interview, the way someone asks a question, or the thread they keep pulling on, or through, an interview.

Channeling that curiosity means handing people problems worth solving and then getting out of the way long enough for them to solve them their way, not mine.

That's why I built two questions into every interview that have nothing to do with the job. No resume language, no “tell me about a time…,” nothing pulled from the role itself. There's no correct answer because there isn’t one answer. In fact, in over a decade of interviews, I haven’t had two answers come even close to the same. What I'm watching is how someone moves through a situation they didn't see coming, what they notice first, what they're willing to assume, or if they ask clarifying questions when all I’ve given them is a simple, open-ended question, and whether they say so out loud instead of letting an assumption pass unspoken.

That's where the real split shows up. Some candidates wait for more information before they commit to anything. Others build the missing pieces themselves and keep moving. One group can execute a plan someone hands them. The other can be the one who creates that plan. Neither is bad; it just depends on the role you’re hiring for. I'll get into both questions and what I'm actually listening for in another post.

The Case That Never Closes

A good mystery has an ending. Business and marketing don't. The moment a channel works or a message lands, the audience moves, the technology shifts, and the rules update again. A new case opens before the last one's fully closed. That's not exhausting to me. It's exactly why I've stayed in this work for as long as I have. The framework holds. The story never does. And I'd rather keep solving it than have it solved. How boring would that be?