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Where work stalls. What it costs.
 
Illustrative example — composite, not a client
Emergent Skills — Stalled Priority Snapshot
2026-07-17

Q1 pricing and packaging change

Arbor Systems (PortCo) — B2B software, about $24M revenue
Prepared for: COO (sponsor)  |  In the room: VP Revenue Operations, Pricing Lead, Finance Manager  |  Delivered by: Jim Wilde, Founder
What stalled
Expected to be live by end of Q1. Intended path: Pricing Lead drafts > VP signs off > Finance margin check > live for new deals.
Work path map
  Step State of the work Elapsed
01 Pricing Lead drafts Work 4 days
02 Sent to VP for sign-off Waiting 8 days
03 VP routes to Finance Waiting 5 days
04 Finance returns questions LoopingWork 6 days
05 Revised draft to VP Waiting 7 days
06 VP defers to weekly ops meeting MeetingAbsorbed 9 days
07 Meeting reopens scope RestartingLoopingWork 10 days
08 New draft waits on same approver WaitingAbsorbed 14 days
  Total elapsed   63 calendar days — 9 weeks

Flow efficiency: about 12%

Roughly 5.5 active working-day equivalents across about 45 working days in the 9-week elapsed life: about 4 days on the initial draft, plus about 1.5 days of revision, review, and margin checking inside steps 04 through 07. Dates reconstructed in the room, not measured. Elapsed delay is shown separately from the direct labor floor below.

Primary work-path pattern

Approval concentration. Every revision routes back through one VP before it can advance. Worst chokepoint: Step 06, where approval is absorbed into the weekly operations meeting.

Associated capacity tax exposure

Manager Load Tax — delay and queue cost. This is the commercial exposure linked to the pattern, not the causal finding.

Estimated visible drag floor — direct extra labor only
$10,530 to $17,550
Direct extra labor only — Medium confidence — Directional estimate, not a measured outcome.
Math: 3 people × 3 to 5 extra hrs/week chasing, reviewing, rebuilding context, and meeting × $130/hr loaded × 9 weeks = $10,530 to $17,550. Loaded rate client supplied.
 
Elapsed delay: 63 calendar days. Not priced into the labor floor.
Potential Forfeited Upside exposure, client supplied: about $90,000. Reported separately and not included in the floor. Illustrative basis: about $24M revenue × 1.5 margin points × one quarter late.
What the two numbers say together

The coordination around this priority cost two to three times the work inside it: about 5.5 active days of drafting and review, against 10 to 17 person-days spent chasing, re-reviewing, and rebuilding context. The team was not slow. The route was expensive.

14-day routing experiment
Change Give the Pricing Lead a pre-cleared margin band. Only out-of-band changes escalate to the VP, same business day.
Owner Pricing Lead    Sponsor: VP Revenue Operations
Metric Median approval wait and number of scope reopens
Target Approval wait ≤ 2 business days; no more than one scope reopen; no increase in margin exceptions
Decision rule If both targets hold at Day 14, standardize the route. If not, test the Finance handoff next.
Verdict

Work Demand Diagnostic warranted.

The path evidence supports a credible local routing hypothesis: the VP queue is a plausible contributor worth testing. Finance loops and scope restarts remain possible contributors. This Snapshot does not establish a shared pattern or capacity effect.

Evidence boundary

Snapshot: local routing hypothesis. Diagnostic: shared pattern. Pilot: reversibility.

Illustrative sample. Arbor Systems is a composite, not a real client. Figures are for demonstration. Assumes stated hours and loaded rate; medium-confidence visible floor only. Elapsed delay and forfeited upside are reported separately.
Fee credits toward the Work Demand Diagnostic ($3,500 to $7,500) if booked within 30 days.

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