Attribution

I've mentioned it before, but is bears repeating:

Truly seeing yourself,

Within the context of where you're operating,

Is one of the most important skills an entrepreneur can have.

And within that skillset, here is something I'd say is particularly challenging for most leaders:

Attribution.

"I did X,

And Y happened.

So X must caused Y."

Seems reasonable.

But many times, it's wrong,

Or only part of the story.

Example:

Founder attribution story:

I invested in marketing but got no new customers in the first month, so marketing was a waste of money. I fired my marketing team and have started to just do it myself. But it's still not really working so I may just stop altogether.

Other possible realities:

• You didn't have product-market fit so your marketing was ineffective

• Your pipeline to conversion is longer than a month

• Your marketing is fine, but Sales is broken

• You invested in the wrong channels

• A million other possibilities

How can you tell if you have attribution right?

Time, repetition, and experimentation.

Having an initial working hypothesis on attribution is a great idea.

But you need to remain curious about the other potential factors

And need a system for learning more and becoming more certain.

Otherwise, you could be building your business on a set of lies

That will be set up to collapse the second reality hits.

And the saddest thing about this common problem,

Is you won't even know what really happened.

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