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It rarely shows up on a P&L line — which is exactly why most leaders never quantify it. You're about to. McKinsey finds managers spend ~37% of their time on decisions, and ~58% of that time runs ineffective. Put in your team's numbers for a grounded estimate — your own math, times their published figure.
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Quick math: total comp ÷ 2,080 working hours, then ×~1.3 for benefits & overhead. A $300K exec ≈ $185/hr loaded. Average it across your team.
Count standing executive-team and cross-functional decision meetings — where the team decides and coordinates. Not 1:1s, heads-down work, or external meetings.
McKinsey finds ~58% of decision-making time is typically used ineffectively — re-litigation, indecision, unclear ownership. Adjust to your team.
Estimated annual cost of ineffective decision time
$317K
That’s 58% of your leadership team’s decision-meeting hours — McKinsey’s benchmark for how much decision-making time typically runs ineffective — at your loaded rate. About 2,111 executive hours a year, re-deciding what was already decided.
From your numbers, precisely
2,111
executive hours a year lost to ineffective decision time.
≈ 1.0
full-time executives’ worth of time, gone to re-litigation.
An honest note on this estimate. Every figure here is your own inputs multiplied by a single published number — McKinsey’s finding that about 58% of decision-making time runs ineffective. No revenue guesswork and no conversion we can’t defend. For scale, McKinsey illustrates the same waste as roughly 530,000 days (~$250M) a year at a Fortune 500. It’s a directional estimate, not an audit — but the direction is real.
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The research behind the number
If we quoted our own statistics, you'd be right to discount them. So the calculator is built entirely on independent, published research. These are the studies underneath it:
37% · 58%
of a manager's time goes to decisions — and ~58% of that time runs ineffective. McKinsey illustrates the waste as ~530,000 days (~$250M) a year at a Fortune 500.
58% · 72%
Highly aligned companies grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable than misaligned peers — alignment is a P&L lever, not a soft one.
48%
of organizations fail to achieve even half of their strategic objectives — the gap is execution, not the plan.
95%
of employees were unaware of or didn't understand their company's strategy — so effort scatters onto work that was never the priority.
Method: the estimate is your own inputs — leadership headcount × decision-meeting hours × loaded rate × the share of that time that runs ineffective × 52 weeks. The default 58% share is McKinsey’s published figure for how much decision-making time is typically ineffective; adjust it to your team. There is no revenue-percentage estimate and no recovery assumption — every figure is your arithmetic times one cited number, stated as a directional estimate, not a financial audit.
That waste pools in one of four places first — the Decision, the Rhythm, the Standard, or the Learning. The Flag Model finds which one, and a Calibration Call names it in 15 minutes.