4 Productivity Vectors | Effectiveness | Decision Making
What Is This Decision Costing Your Organisation?
The cost of slow decision making is rarely visible on any budget line, yet it compounds every week a decision stays unresolved. Calculate your exact toll across four drivers: direct labour, innovation at risk, turnover risk, and external advisory. Two minutes. One number that will trigger your next productivity increase.
Santi has led teams at
THE COST NO ONE IS COUNTING
The cost of slow decision making never appears on the P&L
Salaries are paid regardless of what anyone is doing with them. So when a team spends six weeks working through a decision, the cost looks invisible on the P&L. This is the cost of slow decision making, and it compounds across every week the decision is still open.
It is not invisible, but it is not part of the traditional KPIs.
Every week a decision runs without resolution, three things accumulate simultaneously: the direct salary hours your senior people are spending in alignment meetings, the value of the initiative being blocked while the decision waits, and the probability that the people sitting inside that process are quietly updating their view of the organisation.
A McKinsey study found that companies making faster, higher-quality decisions are twice as likely to outperform their peers on financial returns. The difference is not intelligence or resources. It is how the decision process is designed.
The calculator below quantifies what your specific decision is costing, across all four drivers. It takes two minutes. The number it produces is one you can act on.
HOW THE CALCULATOR WORKS
Two minutes. Four cost drivers. One recovery opportunity.
Organisations rarely calculate the cost of slow decision making because the numbers are spread across salary lines, project budgets, and attrition figures that are hard to connect. This tool does that; it is not perfect, but it gets the job done.
01
Enter your team’s data
Two salary bands, weekly hours per person, decision duration, and the value of the initiative being blocked. Estimates are fine.
02
See your Decision Toll
Your total cost, weekly burn rate, and a Decision Velocity Score from A to D, benchmarked against organisations that make decisions faster.
03
Get your three actions
Specific moves tied to your dominant cost driver: one for this week, one for this month, one to bring to leadership. Plus a one-page summary to share.
YOUR CALCULATOR
Calculate yours now
Think of a specific decision your team is currently working through, or one that recently closed. The result will be more useful than you expect.
What Is Your Decision Really Costing You?
Quantify the full toll of a slow decision: labour, innovation, people risk, and external advisory. Estimates work fine. You will get a number that matters in under two minutes.
Your results are ready.
Your full breakdown appears on the next screen, where you can download it as a one-page PDF to keep. We will also send a few short, practical follow-ups on cutting decision cost.
No spam. Unsubscribe any time. Your data stays private.
Keep your numbers. Decisions take time — bring this back to your next conversation.
You found the number. Now let’s cut it.
In 30 minutes, we identify which cost driver is generating most of your total, and the one move that addresses it first. Nothing to prepare. Nothing to buy.
Book My Free 30-Min DiagnosticTHE FREE 30-MINUTE SESSION
The calculator names the cost. The session finds the root.
The calculator identifies your total and your dominant cost driver. The 30-minute session goes one step further.
We look at the specific decision behind your numbers, map it against the Decision Making element of the 4 Productivity Vectors, and identify the one structural change that will cut the most cost in the shortest time.
No pitch. No upsell. A focused conversation about your numbers.
30 minutes | Via video call | No preparation required
WHO RUNS THE SESSION
Twenty years of decisions. Yours included.
I spent twenty years as a senior leader at Emirates, Virgin, Philip Morris, and Mondelez. Decision-making friction was one of the most consistent sources of waste I encountered at every level, in every kind of organization.
The 4 Productivity Vectors is the framework I built from that experience. Decision Making sits within the Effectiveness vector. It is not the most complex of the sixteen elements. It is frequently the most expensive one to get wrong.
I have taught this to 38,000 professionals across 40 countries through courses, workshops, and coaching. The 30-minute session applies it to your specific situation and your specific numbers.
QUESTIONS
What you probably want to know before you fill it in
Is the calculator free?
Yes. The calculator, your cost breakdown, your Decision Velocity Score, and the three-action plan are all free. You give your email to receive the results and a follow-up plan. That email also subscribes you to the Productivi-Tree newsletter. You can unsubscribe immediately if you prefer.
What if my numbers are rough estimates?
Estimates work fine. The calculator produces a directionally accurate number, not an accounting entry. Even conservative estimates tend to produce a result that surprises people. The point is not precision to the last euro. It is magnitude and pattern.
Who is the 30-minute session for?
Team leads and senior managers running a specific decision process and wanting to cut the time and cost. Also COOs and operations leaders who see the pattern repeating across multiple initiatives and want to address it at the process level.
What happens after the 30-minute session?
You receive a summary of the findings and one specific next step. If a deeper engagement makes sense for your team or organisation, I will explain what that would look like. There is no follow-up pitch sequence and no automated pressure to buy anything.
Is this connected to the full 4 Productivity Vectors assessment?
The Decision Cost Calculator sits within the Effectiveness vector, in the Decision Making element specifically. If you want to assess your performance across all 16 elements, the full Productivity Assessment is available here.
Can my team use this together in a workshop?
Yes. Several teams run the calculator individually, then compare results in a session to identify where their collective decision overhead is coming from. It works well as a workshop opener or a retrospective diagnostic.
How are the values calculated?
Every figure uses transparent, defensible assumptions you can audit. Hourly cost = annual salary ÷ 2,080 working hours × 1.4 (salary plus a 40% overhead for benefits, tax, tools and space — an SHRM-standard loading).
Direct Labour Cost = hourly cost × weekly hours × people × weeks, with a coordination multiplier (1.0 within one team, 1.2 across 2–3 departments, 1.5 for org-wide).
Innovation Value at Risk = the blocked initiative’s value × 20% (Gartner’s estimate of value eroded by delay) × the fraction of the year the decision has run.
Turnover Risk Cost = the probability of losing one key person (rising the longer the decision drags) × 1.5× their salary to replace (SHRM). It models one at-risk person, not the whole team.
External Advisory Cost = consulting days × day rate, when advisors are involved.
Your Recovery Opportunity is 60% of the total — a conservative estimate of what a better-designed decision process typically reclaims.
The number is already accumulating.
Every week a decision stays unresolved, the cost compounds. The calculator takes two minutes. The result gives you something specific to act on.