Understanding the External Forces That Now Dominate GTM Performance

For decades, go-to-market (GTM) leaders operated on a simple belief: that outcomes could be engineered. With the right messaging, the right spend, the right sequence, you could drive pipeline, forecast reliably, and attribute success with mathematical confidence.

That belief has collapsed.

In its place is a volatile new reality: external forces now dominate the causal equation. What once made up 20–30% of the performance variability in marketing, sales, and GTM overall has surged to 70–80%. The market is no longer a backdrop—it’s the primary driver. And most GTM tools, teams, and strategies are still optimized for a world that no longer exists.

The illusion of internal control is over. The storm is here. And the map doesn’t match the terrain.

1. From Calm Tailwinds to Compounding Storms: A 30-Year Causal Shift

To see how we arrived here, consider the past three decades in three distinct causal eras—each defined by the type and intensity of "marketplace winds" shaping GTM outcomes.

1995–2005: Predictable Tailwinds

The late '90s and early 2000s were marked by optimism and linear growth. The Cold War had ended. Globalization and digitization were ascendant. Capital was cheap. Tech innovation felt like a tailwind you could trust.

• Externality share of causal load: ~20%
• Dominant Winds: Tailwinds
• Examples: Internet adoption, WTO trade liberalization, early cloud software

GTM teams thrived through internal execution. The environment itself was stable enough to be ignored.

2006–2015: The Rise of Crosswinds

The 2008 financial crisis, the explosion of mobile and social platforms, and early regulatory ripples created a more volatile environment. Attribution started breaking. Buyer behavior became non-linear. Platform monopolies took root.

• Externality share of causal load: ~40%
• Dominant Winds: Crosswinds
• Examples: Great Recession, Arab Spring, iPhone era, platform gatekeeping

Externalities were no longer rare—they were intermittent and unpredictable. But most leaders still treated them as one-offs.

2016–2025: The Storm Era

Today, we operate in a landscape of overlapping, compounding, and time-lagged external forces. COVID-19 didn’t just distort demand—it upended signal integrity. U.S.–China tensions haven’t just affected supply—they’ve reordered customer trust. GenAI hasn’t just improved productivity—it’s redrawing what buyers expect and how fast they expect it.

• Externality share of causal load: 70–80%
• Dominant Winds: Headwinds + chaotic crosswinds
• Examples: Pandemic, war in Ukraine, climate shocks, AI, regulatory fragmentation, Delaware 2023 fiduciary ruling

Internal execution now matters less than how effectively you model, anticipate, and respond to what’s happening outside the building.

At the heart of this shift is a deeper epistemic breakdown: most GTM tools were built to track correlation, not causality.

They assume:

• A relatively closed system
• Direct, short time-lag between action and result
• Stable buyer behavior
• Known or controllable channels

But none of these assumptions hold today.

This is why so many GTM leaders now experience:

• Rising spend, falling effectiveness
• Dashboards full of noise and false signals
• Missed forecasts and trust erosion with Finance
• A creeping sense that “doing more” no longer equates to “doing better”

Complexity vs. Velocity: What’s Really Changed?

The external burden on performance isn’t just bigger—it’s composed of two forces working in tandem:

1. Complexity: The number, interdependence, and opacity of variables

• Trade policy now influences digital ad pricing.
• A single privacy regulation can upend martech stack utility.
• Platform changes like LinkedIn’s API shutdowns or Salesforce’s ISV policy revisions can destroy channel access overnight.

2. Velocity: The speed and frequency of change

• Time to disruption has collapsed.
• Strategic windows are shorter than budgeting cycles.
• Leaders are forced to react before they can model.

Complexity built the storm. Velocity made it lethal.

The chart below shows how complexity initially dominated, but velocity has caught up—eroding decision time, clarity, and control:

The Human Cost: Saturation, Strategic Paralysis, and Institutional Fog

As external complexity and velocity increase, the effects are not just operational—they’re psychological.

Across GTM teams, we see:

• Burnout and apathy
• Endless strategy decks with no real prioritization
• Teams spread thin across 30+ “must-win” fronts
• Leaders firefighting, not forecasting

This leads to cognitive saturation—a condition where the brain can no longer differentiate between urgent and important, signal and noise.

"It’s not that we can’t do the work. It’s that we no longer know which work actually matters."

When Everything Is a Priority, Nothing Is a Strategy

There’s an old truth: Them that seek to defend everything, defend nothing. Them that pursue everything, pursue nothing.

In today’s GTM reality, strategy has collapsed into prioritization theater.

• Every campaign is “essential.”
• Every region is “strategic.”
• Every channel is “mission-critical.”
• Every function must feel "valuable."

Without causal clarity, no one knows what actually moves the needle. So we hedge. We spread. We drown.

This doesn’t just waste resources. It slowly conditions teams to believe that success is arbitrary, that failure is fate, and that leadership is reactive by necessity. That is the cultural wound behind so many underperforming GTM orgs today.

Reclaiming Strategic Focus Through Causality

This is where Causal AI plays a far deeper role than measurement or modeling. It restores agency. It makes visible the links between actions and outcomes, between effort and effect. It reveals:

• Which programs are being lifted (or suppressed) by externalities
• Which variables are within your control—and which aren’t
• Which bets are worth doubling down—and which are pure distraction
• How long effects last, and when to intervene
• Where your time, attention, and money should go next

It doesn’t just tell you what worked. It tells you why it worked, and what to do now.

This is how you break the paralysis. This is how you reintroduce focus. This is how GTM becomes strategic again.

Final Thought: The Storm Is Already Here

Most GTM strategies today are still calibrated to 2015 conditions—when externalities were marginal and execution was king. But the world has changed. And so has the causal terrain.

You can't navigate high-frequency volatility with low-resolution maps. You can’t lead in a storm by pretending the wind doesn’t matter. And you can’t build a high-performance GTM function if you don’t know what’s actually driving outcomes. And the new rules extending fiduciary duty of oversight to all corporate officers means that having a causal understanding of your world is now a mandate.

You don’t need more dashboards. You need a compass. You need causality. Because in the new market, clarity around causes and effects is the ultimate advantage.

Bill Zengel Bill Schmarzo John Thompson Malcolm Hawker Edgar Baum Beth Bauer Michelle Killebrew Tim Hillison