The Rain Dance That Worked (When You Credit the Wrong Thing)

Sales team starts a new outreach campaign in January. Revenue spikes in February. VP of Sales declares victory: "Our campaign worked! Do more of it!" Except revenue spikes every February—it's tax refund season. The campaign did nothing. But the team doubles down, wastes budget, and wonders why results don't repeat. It's the rain dance fallacy: you do a rain dance, it rains, you assume the dance worked. Ignore that it was already cloudy. Humans are wired to find patterns and assign credit, even when it's coincidence. In business, this leads to investing in things that don't work and ignoring things that do. It's expensive and dumb.