The cost of the conversations your team keeps avoiding

The conversation is cheap. Avoiding it isn't.

The cost of the conversations your team keeps avoiding

The conversation is cheap. Avoiding it isn't.

01 Start with one issueOne thing your team keeps circling. Usually many conversations, not one.
The MeetingThe meeting, the meeting after it, and the fallout. What you can see.
people
hours
$/ hr
02 Scale it to your organizationEvery team keeps at least one thing unresolved.
people
per team
Assumptions
per team
days

Teams = every team at every level, counted by span of control, from front-line teams up to the exec team. Each is one place an issue can stall.

03 Add the falloutOptional. The specific costs we usually walk through together.
Statement · illustrative
Your organization
Amount owed to inertia
30 people · 6 teams · 6 avoided issues
The MeetingAcross every team, and its fallout Visible $0
The DelayA deliverable sitting while it goes unresolved Half-seen off
The DragEveryone downstream, living with it Unseen off
What it's costing youMeetings across the org · per issue
$0

How to read this

  • The Meeting is more than the meeting. Count the meeting after the meeting, the rumination, and the time cleaning up the fallout, per person, to the quarter hour.
  • The rate is deliberately low. Fifty dollars an hour loaded is below average for a worker and well below a manager, so the floor stays conservative.
  • The Meeting scales with the whole org, the Delay and the Drag do not. Every team has a meeting cost, so it multiplies by your team count. The Delay and the Drag are specific costs you name once, the delayed deliverable and the outdated system, never multiplied across every team.
  • One avoided issue per team is the floor. Most teams carry more; a healthy team rarely carries none.
  • The Delay and the Drag are best walked through in person. They are where the real number hides, and they are hard to see alone. That is the conversation, not the calculator.

This is a conversation tool, not an appraisal. It turns costs you already carry into visible arithmetic so a room can reason about them together. It does not claim to measure any specific loss, and it deliberately leaves the largest, least visible costs (lost customers, missed opportunity, morale, turnover) uncounted. Every figure is illustrative and built from your own numbers.

Built from your numbers. Every figure is illustrative.

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Your numbers, sent to you, plus one way to start the conversation this page is about.

Mitch emails you this statement himself, and may follow up personally if it looks worth a conversation.

The cost isn't the conversation. It's everything the business keeps doing because the conversation hasn't happened.

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