I thought I’d finally proven every one of my math teachers wrong.

“Pay attention!” they’d say, “because no matter what you do in life, you’re going to use algebra.”. But does this apply to me, since I work in marketing? Not digital marketing or market research, but something so qualitative that there was no way I would ever need algebra: Customer engagement. I facilitated executive briefings. No math is involved there. I set up executive sponsorship programs. Nothing but addition, subtraction and statistics in that. And I built and ran customer advisory boards. Math-free? Not so fast…

I learned that launching Customer Advisory Boards requires knowledge of three -- until now -- little-known mathematical concepts. With apologies to Pythagoras, Euclid, and my 8th-grade algebra teacher, Mr Fitz-Randolph, here are three mathematical concepts that will help you set your CAB up for success.