Ashley Stirrup

The most dangerous animal in your organization isn't a bad idea. It's a senior leader with a strong opinion and no data to challenge it. Ron Kohavi has a name for this: the HiPPO — the Highest Paid Person's Opinion. He and Avinash Kaushik coined the term back in 2007, and nearly two decades later, it's still the default decision-making mode at most companies. Jim Barksdale, the CEO of Netscape, put it best: "If we have data, let's look at data. If all we have are opinions, let's go with mine." That's honest, at least. Most HiPPOs aren't that self-aware. They've been right before, sometimes spectacularly right, and that track record becomes a gravitational pull. The room defers. The data gets ignored. The experiment doesn't get run. Here's the thing: Kohavi isn't anti-HiPPO. He's not arguing that senior leaders should lose their voice. He's arguing for something better, the Data-Driven HiPPO: a leader who has strong instincts and the intellectual humility to test them against reality. A leader who listens to customers through data, not just their own pattern-matching. The difference between those two leaders? One builds a culture where evidence shapes decisions. The other builds a culture where no one runs experiments because the outcome is already decided. If your team is sitting on feature ideas, waiting for a leader to greenlight something based on vibes — the HiPPO is winning. A/B testing doesn't threaten authority. It makes authority smarter. The best leaders use experimentation to extend their judgment, not replace it. They're still making calls — they just know when they're guessing. That's the kind of organization we built GrowthBook to support. Question for the room: Have you ever seen a HiPPO override a clear data signal — or have you watched a leader evolve into a Data-Driven HiPPO? What made the difference?

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