Editorial standards
How we write, source and correct what we publish.
The answers on this site are written by the Lumina Business Advisory team. This page sets out the rules that writing follows: where a number may come from, which sources qualify, how often they are read again, and how a mistake gets corrected in public.
Who writes
Written by the team, published under the firm’s name.
Every answer carries the same byline: by the Lumina Business Advisory team. Lumina Business Advisory is Tamara Stepanyan’s firm, and the experience behind the method is the team’s — see About.
No outside expert reviews the answers before they are published, and no reviewer is named. If that changes, the reviewer’s name and role will appear on the byline of each answer they have reviewed, and on no other.
Where every figure comes from
Four kinds of numbers. There is no fifth.
Every number on this site is one of four kinds. Here is what each one is and how you can check it yourself. How it works shows the same four applied to the Review’s headline figure.
| The kind | Where it comes from | How you check it |
|---|---|---|
| Your number | You entered it in the Leak Calculator or shared it in a working session. | Change the input. The figure follows. |
| A cited statistic | A third party published it. Author, publication and year are printed beside it, with a live link. | Follow the link and read the source. |
| Our own measurement | We counted it in our own records, and the method is stated next to the count. | Ask how it was counted. The method travels with the number. |
| A labeled assumption | A number we chose to show the shape of a calculation — and said so, in writing, where it appears. | Replace it with yours. Every assumption sits in an editable field or carries its label in the text. |
Your number
You entered it in the Leak Calculator or shared it in a working session.
Check it: Change the input. The figure follows.
A cited statistic
A third party published it. Author, publication and year are printed beside it, with a live link.
Check it: Follow the link and read the source.
Our own measurement
We counted it in our own records, and the method is stated next to the count.
Check it: Ask how it was counted. The method travels with the number.
A labeled assumption
A number we chose to show the shape of a calculation — and said so, in writing, where it appears.
Check it: Replace it with yours. Every assumption sits in an editable field or carries its label in the text.
A number that fits none of the four does not run.
Where cited figures come from
A cited figure is named, dated and read against the original.
- Published research, with any vendor tie named.
- A cited statistic comes from published research — from universities, government agencies, professional bodies, research firms and established publications. A vendor’s figures about its own customers do not establish a market-wide rate on their own. If we cite them, we name the dataset, method, limits and commercial tie. Four studies we cite were run with a vendor or paid for by one, and we name the tie here: the Lead Response Management study (2007) was run in partnership with InsideSales.com, a sales-software company; its 2011 follow-up in Harvard Business Review was co-written by a sales-software chief executive; the 2014 BIA/Kelsey report on phone leads was sponsored by Bandwidth; and Jeff Toister’s 2020 email-response survey was sponsored by SuperOffice.
- Named, dated, linked.
- The author or body, the publication and the year travel with the figure, along with where it was published, so you can read it yourself instead of taking our word for it.
- Read against the original.
- A figure is checked against the source it came from, not against another site quoting it. If the original cannot be found, the figure is cut. The follow-up figure we traced and declined to repeat shows what that looks like.
- What the byline dates mean.
- “Updated” is the day the answer’s text last changed. Any edit moves it, a reworded sentence or a new link included, so it does not mean the sources were read again that day.
- “Sources checked” is never older than six months.
- When someone reads an answer’s sources again against the originals, its byline adds “Sources checked” and that day’s date. The site will not publish that line once the date is more than six months old: the sources are read again, or the line comes off. If a source has moved, changed or been withdrawn, the figure is corrected or removed, and the change is entered in the log below.
Corrections log
What we changed, and why, dated.
The log starts on the date of its first entry; earlier changes were not logged.
Lines that implied a track record we cannot show.
Eleven sentences spoke as if they were drawn from past client work: one on the Answers page, two on industry pages, one each on How it works, the Operating Scorecard and the sample report, and five in two answers. This site publishes no client case studies, so those sentences could not be backed. Each was rewritten to say what the Review checks or to drop the implied experience, and a check in the site’s build now rejects the phrasings most of them used.
In the same pass, fourteen generalizations in the answers about what “most” shops, practices, firms, companies or brokerages do were softened to “many” or “often”, because no counted source stands behind “most”.
Report an error
Found something wrong? Tell us where.
Write to hello@lumina-business-advisory.com with the page address and the sentence or figure in question. A link to the source you think says otherwise helps.
Or call +1 (202) 600-6027. A real person answers or calls you back the same business day.
If the correction changes a figure, a claim or a recommendation, it is entered in the log above with its date. Typos are fixed without an entry.