"It's fuzzy"

When asked about the line of sight from cause to effect, sometimes the answer is:

• "It's fuzzy", or
  
• "I can't tell" or
  
• "I have no idea"

This is not necessarily bad news. For one thing, the listener now knows that he or she may be asked to quantify the line of sight and will consciously or unconsciously start to think about it. Second, in the early stages of strategy execution its more important to be directionally correct than be mathematically accurate.

Many new endeavors start with hunches, data is collected to validate hypotheses and results are more probabilistic than deterministic. The fog begins to lift with experience. If this is a first time experience, then you will have to learn about line of sight from cause to effect the hard way!

To protect your investment and stop good money from chasing the bad, put in gates and check points with clear guidelines. Adjust the gates and guidelines based on experience.