Categories: Cardinal Path

A 2026 Resolution for Analytics Leaders: Make New Mistakes

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As organizations set their resolutions for 2026, the focus often lands on familiar goals: more efficiency, better performance, smarter decisions. All worthy ambitions. But there’s a resolution that matters more than any single metric:

Commit to making new mistakes, not the same ones.

In analytics, the fear of mistakes can quietly undermine progress. Precision is important, but when the desire to be right outweighs the willingness to learn, innovation slows and opportunity slips away.

Fear doesn’t create rigor, it creates hesitation. We operate in high-stakes environments. Data informs revenue strategy, customer experience, and operational investment. It’s understandable that teams want certainty before acting.

When fear drives decision-making, teams tend to:

Rely on legacy models and familiar KPIs
Avoid testing bold hypotheses
Over-optimize past answers instead of exploring new questions
Delay action while waiting for “perfect” data

The result isn’t fewer mistakes. It’s fewer insights.

Making new mistakes means you’re pushing into new territory.

Making new mistakes is where progress lives: new data sources, new models, new ways of activating insights.

Our clients don’t hire us to help them play it safe. They hire us to help them grow. We drive business impact because we excel at two things simultaneously:

Analytical excellence: strong foundations, trusted data, disciplined methodology
Organizational enablement: helping teams act, test, and iterate with confidence

In 2026, run further, faster, and with sharper scissors.

Consider reframing your goals:

Are you learning faster than last year?
Are your teams empowered to test and refine ideas?
Are mistakes leading to better decisions—or being quietly avoided?

In 2026, innovation won’t come by playing defense. You must build a culture that learns on purpose.

Thoughtful experimentation is encouraged
Insights are acted on, not just admired
Feedback loops are fast and honest
Lessons are documented and shared

So make this your resolution: Be bold enough to make new mistakes, and disciplined enough to avoid repeating the old ones.

Author

Lauren Norton

Lauren oversees engagements within the Health Sciences vertical, leading enterprise client relationships across marketing, media, operations, IT and privacy teams.
She blends years of analytics experience across payer, provider and pharma with knowledge of health law and policy to successfully guide Privacy Transformation initiatives. By maintaining awareness of evolving privacy regulations that impact data collection and activation practices, she’s able to guide regulated companies to preserve and expand marketing practices and capabilities that align with business and privacy requirements.
View all posts

Lauren Norton

Lauren oversees engagements within the Health Sciences vertical, leading enterprise client relationships across marketing, media, operations, IT and privacy teams. She blends years of analytics experience across payer, provider and pharma with knowledge of health law and policy to successfully guide Privacy Transformation initiatives. By maintaining awareness of evolving privacy regulations that impact data collection and activation practices, she’s able to guide regulated companies to preserve and expand marketing practices and capabilities that align with business and privacy requirements.