Two minutes · Your inputs · Directional labor-cost scenario

How Much Is Execution Drag Costing This Team?

Execution drag has two interacting sources: friction in the work path, and reduced access to skill in the people carrying it. This calculator does not diagnose either source. It takes the directly traceable extra time you enter, such as chasing, repeated review, avoidable meetings, rework, and context rebuilding, and reports the share of salary already being spent on it. That traceable labor is the visible floor. Elapsed delay, missed value, and any effect on access to skill sit above the floor and are not measured here. Three inputs produce a directional planning scenario, not a measured result.

Built for the COO, CFO, Chief of Staff, and the operators who own stuck priorities.

The scenario

Estimate direct extra labor on one team

The result uses only your inputs. Change an assumption and the scenario changes with it.

Three inputs

Team size

Count the people whose output is judgment, analysis, or decisions. Not total headcount.

Or enter a custom size

Fully loaded annual cost per person Use the loaded figure your finance team uses. If none is available, enter a documented planning estimate that includes pay, benefits, payroll taxes, and overhead.

Direct extra hours per person per day Count only time reasonably attributable to chasing, repeated review, avoidable meetings, rework, or context rebuilding. Exclude elapsed waiting, productive work, and speculative missed value.

1 hr

Use a number you can defend. One hour is a round starting unit, not a benchmark and not a measured rate. Move the slider to the amount this team can reasonably reconstruct from actual work.

Calculation assumptions (adjust if yours differ)

Operating days per year Working days the team is actually in the work, after holidays and average time off.

Operating hours in a working day Actual hours worked in a typical day. For salaried people carrying judgment work, this is often 9 to 10 rather than the contracted 8.

The hourly rate divides loaded annual cost by the hours actually worked, because this page apportions salary that has already been spent. A shorter costing convention such as 1,800 hours prices an incremental hour you might buy, which is a different question. Using it here would charge the extra time at a rate above what was actually paid for it, and the share of the day would stop reconciling to the share of payroll.

The directional estimate

Annual loaded cost of the extra time entered $0 Salary already in the payroll line, not a new cost and not recoverable cash.

The same team at three time assumptions The extra hours entered is the only soft input on this page, so the honest range is what happens when that one number moves. These are not a confidence interval. 30 minutes per person per day$0 1 hour per person per day$0 2 hours per person per day$0

Challenge the time assumption first. The extra hours entered above are the assumption this whole figure rests on, and the first thing a CFO should push on. Everything else here is arithmetic.

Team extra time per working day 0 Hours across the whole team, per working day.

Loaded cost of extra time per working day $0 Annual scenario divided by operating days.

Loaded cost per hour $0

If routing changes reduced that extra time Optional, and starts at zero. Model a reduction in the extra hours per person per day, not a return on an investment.

Move the slider to model a reduction. A reduction does not create new cash hours automatically. It returns capacity that can become faster delivery, more output, lower overtime, better quality, or a smaller future cost base. The business decides how the value lands. An open calendar is not yet profit.

What this does and does not count. Included: only the extra time entered above, valued at the loaded cost of an hour actually worked. This is the visible drag floor. Excluded: elapsed delay, client-supplied opportunity value, sustained overload and attrition exposure, and any effect on judgment, focus, communication, creativity, or work quality. Those sit above the floor, require separate evidence, and are never added here automatically. This is a planning scenario, not a measured outcome or a forecast of cash savings.

The calculator estimates a direct-labor scenario. It cannot locate the pattern or test the capacity effect.
The Stalled Priority Snapshot reconstructs one live work path with up to three people who move, approve, or unblock it. In 90 minutes it separates hands-on work from waiting, estimates directly traceable extra labor, reports elapsed delay separately, and defines one 14-day routing experiment with an owner, a metric, a target, and a decision rule. A one-page readout follows within 24 hours. $1,500 flat.

Book a Stalled Priority Snapshot Or start with the Work Demand Diagnostic

Snapshot: local routing hypothesis. Diagnostic: shared pattern. Audit: measurement across flows and roles. Pilot: reversibility.
The Snapshot fee credits toward the Diagnostic if booked within 30 days. On-site available in the NY/NJ metro.

Take a clear assumption set into the budget conversation

Everything above is yours, with no gate. The optional leadership-ready email records your scenario math, the assumptions, what is excluded, and the next evidence needed to confirm, reduce, or redirect the estimate.

1. What exactly is included? 2. Which assumptions drive the number? 3. What evidence would confirm or reduce it?

Your scenario, as configured above:

$0 annual scenario 0.0 FTE-equivalents of paid time $0 per working day

Live values from your scenario, not placeholders. They remain assumptions until company evidence replaces them.

Email sent. Your Execution Drag scenario should arrive shortly. If it does not, check spam or use the contact form.

If a specific priority sits behind these numbers, the Stalled Priority Snapshot is the next evidence step.

The number is the start, not the finding.

The calculator estimates the loaded cost of directly traceable extra time. The Snapshot tests one local work path. The Diagnostic examines whether the pattern is shared. The Audit measures across multiple flows and roles and builds the economic model. The Pilot tests whether changing the conditions improves an agreed operating metric. Each stage earns, redirects, or stops the next.

Book a Stalled Priority Snapshot

Founder-led engagements. Snapshot: 90 minutes, $1,500, credits toward the Diagnostic.

Method note: annual loaded-cost scenario = team size × direct extra hours per person per day × operating days per year × loaded hourly cost, where loaded hourly cost = fully loaded annual cost ÷ (operating days × operating hours in a working day). Dividing by hours actually worked is what makes the share of the day and the share of payroll reconcile to the same figure. The output is directional planning math based entirely on user-entered assumptions. It is not a benchmark, a diagnosis, a measured outcome, or a forecast of cash savings. It is the visible drag floor. Elapsed delay, opportunity value, sustained overload exposure, and any effect on access to skill are excluded and require separate evidence. Part of Emergent Skills, Performance Infrastructure for Demanding Knowledge Work.

Work Demand calculator