Restoring Rhyme and Reason to the Boardroom
To build a sustainable company, you must reconcile the creative chaos of product development with the rigid logic of compliance.
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I love children’s literature, and I often look to it to center my thinking on even my most serious business strategies. Specifically, the one I keep returning to is Norton Juster’s masterpiece, The Phantom Tollbooth.
If you haven’t read it since childhood, or (heaven forbid) not at all, it is the story of a bored boy named Milo who drives a toy car through a magical tollbooth into the Kingdom of Wisdom. It is witty, absurd, and remarkably profound. Lately, as I navigate the world of data privacy and fractional compliance, I’m reminded that the book isn’t just a fantasy. It is a documentary about the modern startup.
We are all technically living in the Kingdom of Wisdom. The irony, of course, is that for a place named after wisdom, there is precious little of it to be found. That is because, just like in the book, our kingdom is in the midst of a silly civil war where common sense has been exiled.
Product Vision is Dictionopolis
Great ideas require more than just beautiful words; they need substance to avoid vanishing into thin air.
In the book, Dictionopolis is the city of words. It is ruled by King Azaz. It is a place of infinite possibility where you can literally eat your words, though I am told "rigid" is a bit chewy. This is the perfect metaphor for the Creative Product side of a business.
Like the citizens of Dictionopolis, founders and product teams are visionaries. They weave narratives; they sell the dream. They care about the user journey, the aesthetic, and the "vibes." It is intoxicating energy. But, as King Azaz inadvertently teaches us, words without structure are dangerous. You can promise the moon, but if you cannot build the rocket, you are simply selling "humbugs."
I see this often. A brilliant product roadmap treats data privacy as a nuisance, like a buzzing fly to be swatted away, rather than a foundational element of the build.
Compliance is Digitopolis
Rigid logic without human context leads to a product that works perfectly but serves no one.
On the other side of the kingdom lies Digitopolis, the city of numbers. It is ruled by the cold, precise Mathemagician. In Digitopolis, numbers are more important than diamonds. This is the world of Legal, Security, and Compliance.
In my role, I am often expected to be the Mathemagician. The expectation is that I will arrive with a frown and a calculator, demanding that "4 + 4 + 4" equal 12 regardless of how it makes the user feel. The trap of Digitopolis is the "Subtraction Stew," which is a meal where the more you eat, the hungrier you get. This is exactly what happens when companies buy endless compliance tools and tick-box templates without a strategy. They consume resources but gain no nourishment.
When Digitopolis runs the show unchecked, you get a business that is perfectly compliant, entirely secure, and utterly devoid of soul or usability (or, sometimes, revenue).
The True Cost of the War
When Creative and Legal view each other as enemies, common sense is exiled from the business.
In the novel, the rivalry between Words (Product) and Numbers (Compliance) becomes so petty that they banish the two princesses, Rhyme and Reason, to the Castle in the Air.
This is the state of many boardrooms today. The "creatives" hide information from legal because they fear the word "no." The "logicians" create policies so draconian that no human can actually follow them. Rhyme and Reason are gone, and so the Kingdom of Wisdom is actually quite foolish. The business loses its balance. It becomes a place of extremes, oscillating between reckless growth or paralyzing caution.
The Aetos Approach
We act as the Watchdog, helping you navigate the Mountains of Ignorance to bring balance back to your operations.
Milo’s quest, and indeed ours, is to rescue Rhyme and Reason. He cannot do it by siding with one King over the other. He has to navigate the Mountains of Ignorance and get past the Terrible Trivium, a demon who wastes your time with useless busywork who is surely the patron saint of unnecessary meetings.
At Aetos, we don’t want to turn your Dictionopolis into a spreadsheet, nor do we want your Digitopolis to stop counting. We want them to talk to each other. We want your privacy policy to match your product vision. We want your compliance framework to support your creativity, not stifle it.
It turns out that the most successful businesses are the ones that realize Words and Numbers aren't enemies. They just need Rhyme and Reason to return.
