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When the C-Suite Questions Your Value (And What 40 Hours of Crisis Prep Taught Me)
- Christian Steinert
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
I was building data products for everyone except the people who mattered most—here's how I course-corrected
I’m stoked to be back writing in the new year. 2026 is off to an incredible start and it gives me chills to think about the progress we’ve made in the last year at Steinert Analytics. We’ve dropped two episodes of The Healthcare Growth Cycle Podcast in the month of January. They’ve been well received.
On the business development front, the first two weeks of 2026 kicked off with a bang the size of a tank mortar. Reflecting back, I learned one of the greatest lessons of my career thus far on the people side of data leadership.
My intent for this issue is to focus on client dynamics and stakeholder management. I’m always learning as a principal consultant - and the last two weeks proved to be a test for the ages. If you follow my LinkedIn, a lot of my content has been hinting at what this article will cover.
However, I’m keeping this issue free flowing. No LinkedIn-esque post structure. Just my thoughts on paper about a client stakeholder issue that mandated 40 hours of non-work time problem solving, brainstorming, coaching and execution.
Although I can’t share nitty gritty details or get super specific, I’m going to walk you through this situation and all its learnings for data leaders managing up to the C-suite. I genuinely believe these learnings are what separate the good data leaders from the great ones. The extra effort it takes to acquire this knowledge can’t be found in a book. It demands a long career of establishing networks with the right data mentors and most tenured data architects on the planet with a willingness to fall on your face before rising up.
The Crisis: When Technical Executives Don’t See the Problem You’re Solving
One of the main reasons this situation is unique is because the C-suite is technical. They know Business Intelligence development. I consider them self-service BI power users. When you’re the leader of a healthcare company, especially in the mid-market, pairing BI skills with that knowledge makes you incredibly precise and influential to the rest of the organization.
However, this self-service BI wasn’t pulling from a strong data foundation. All reports are directly hitting their on-premise transactional database. No standard source of truth. No data governance. Just ad hoc queries and metric calculations that can vary from one report to the next.
This creates chaos. Exactly why the IT leaders brought us in - to solve the problem of metric clarity, company alignment and to get off a high maintenance on premise database.
However…here’s where I screwed up.
I assumed the C-suite also agreed metric clarity across the organization was an issue. News Flash: They did not.
It took me an entire year to realize this, but I never thought to align with the C-suite directly. I shifted from my data leader/consulting mindset to throwing all my trust in the organization’s hierarchical structure to resolve the misalignment.
Steinert Analytics delivered a ton of great work, but was it agreed upon and valued by the C-suite? Not as much. They couldn’t see and feel it.
So as the 2026 budget discussions happened, the Steinert Analytics line item was put into question by the C-suite. This sparked a conversation about whether or not we would stay on for the 2026 fiscal year.
Obviously an extremely stressful situation. And one that mandated deep preparation for navigating this.
The 40-Hour War Room: How Elite Mentorship Transforms Data Leadership
I credit a few mentors to my preparation for handling this. The biggest shout out undoubtedly goes to Ergest Xheblati. He’s one of the most tenured data architects on the planet. (Check out his incredible Substack)
His knowledge on the people-side of data management and leadership is unrivaled, and I’m extremely grateful to have him in my corner for navigating situations like this.
I alluded to a lot of this in my LinkedIn post featuring Ergest below.
Back to the misalignment: the C-suite never thought that metrics clarity was a problem. When starting this conversation, you need to ask the top-most stakeholder what their objectives are.
Given it’s the beginning of 2026, the timing is perfect for this catalyst question.
From there, ask how they’re measuring success against those objectives. This narrows in on a select few KPIs.
It allows you to then explain what it will take to accurately build the reporting for those KPIs.
Notice, I never went into a defensive mode - pitching all of the data products and data models we had built to date. This would have fallen on deaf ears to the C-suite, because we never involved them in the builds of these deliverables. Although we built some foundational infrastructure and high priority data reporting automations, it was never FULLY aligned with the needs of the C-suite. Moreso the needs of middle managers and VPs.
Now, because I failed to ask the C-suite what their objectives are long ago, I had some ground to recover.
I put together one slide highlighting my Learnings and Changes going forward. This showcased my miss on not getting the C-suite’s objectives aligned out of the gate as the consultant. Instead we operated like a dashboard factory and I highlighted that.
Then I explained what changes we’ll make to this working partnership moving forward. This shows a proactive response that eliminates a sense of rumination and dwelling that doesn’t get us anywhere. Instead, it moves the needle immediately.
The Framework That Saved Everything: Crystallizing Our True Value
Ergest helped crystallize my engagement structure with clients. Due to this situation, the misaligned C-suite forced me to clarify every aspect of our value as a consulting agency.
Offer 1 is Metrics Clarity and Organizational Alignment by implementing Data Management. Let’s baseline a company’s Data & AI Foundation through metric definitions, standardization and the build of a data warehouse.
Offer 2 is producing a specific data project based off a key objective, their respective KPIs and a data product to support answering those questions. It’s a much smaller scope than the longer term Metrics Clarity and Organization Alignment data transformation.
When presenting to the C-suite, since they didn’t view Offer 1 as an issue, the alternative option to present was Offer 2. This allows flexibility when your core offer isn’t received well by a client.
Honestly, this exercise went far beyond this situation. It’s now helping me navigate the value Steinert Analytics can bring to all our healthcare clients. Depending on the environment and their needs, these packages allow us to be dynamic and flexible to fill a multitude of client needs.
The Unexpected Twist: When All Your Prep Hits a Wall
After 40 hours of afterhours prep, I was ready to consult and lead this situation to a healthy resolution.
However, the meeting ended up being switched to internal only. There was nothing I could do in this situation except trust my champion stakeholders and give the situation to the Universe (in my case God).
The outcome was positive. Our champion stakeholders ended up doing a fantastic job supporting our case and ensuring the relevance and need of Steinert Analytics for 2026.
Naturally, I was bummed that I didn’t get to speak my thoughts and consultation to the C-suite. After all that prep work, it was an anti-climatic build up for my nerves. However, the learnings and skill-up from all of this are extremely profound.
I hope you took something away from my learnings above. These skills are what truly separate data professionals, and it’s something AI can’t even come close to replacing.
Furthermore, the outcome of this reinforced the critical importance of established trust, transparency, and commitment to your client. Without those pillars, the relationship crumbles. It was our transparency and execution that built the foundation to withstand political C-suite headwinds when it comes to budget.
We’ve provided this client an incredible experience working with us. I look forward to moving forward with a strategic partnership first approach, and always tying back value to the leadership’s objectives. Routine check-ins from now on will be pushed by me.
What a MASSIVE learning to start 2026, and I can’t wait to hold this one close to my heart as we venture into many new client opportunities in healthcare!
Christian Steinert is the founder of Steinert Analytics, helping healthcare organizations turn data into actionable insights. Subscribe to Rooftop Insights for weekly perspectives on analytics and business intelligence in these industries.
Also - check out our free Healthcare Analytics Playbook eBook here.
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