Give credit where the work started, not only where the result became visible.

Visibility is a poor proxy for contribution. The person who presents, ships, or closes is standing where everyone is looking, but the useful part often happened months earlier in a conversation nobody recorded: the reframing, the first draft, the objection that saved the whole thing. Because those moments leave no artifact, credit drifts toward the end of the process by default. It is not usually theft; it is just what attention does.

Before your next thank-you or write-up, trace the idea backward and name whoever started it. Do it in front of other people rather than privately. It costs you nothing and changes what your team believes is worth doing.