The Data Doesn’t Care How Confident the Room Feels

In most large organizations, 15–25% of the money spent executing strategy is lost to rework, delays, and crossed priorities.

That’s $30–100 million quietly written off each year inside a $2B revenue division — hidden in budgets that look on track.

I know what some of you are thinking — our number can’t be that high.

Maybe not. But even if you’re half that, you’re still burning more money than any process improvement program could ever recover.

And none of it shows up in a dashboard.

Leaders don’t miss it because they’re careless. They miss it because their systems were built to track outputs, not how people process them.

In the room, leadership teams appear aligned: they use the same language, share a common intent, and communicate with confidence.

But beneath the surface, only a fraction are framing and prioritizing strategy the same way.

That’s not dysfunction. It’s the natural separation that forms between what’s said and what’s actually processed when people make decisions.

When those unseen divergences stack up, the pattern is predictable:

All while everyone believes they’re aligned.

Traditional tools can’t see it.

Surveys, dashboards, and performance systems rely on what people say or believe.

The real insight lives beneath that — in how people interpret, prioritize, and act without realizing it.

Until recently, that layer was invisible.

Strategy cycles are compressing.

AI is speeding decision loops.

Every planning cycle amplifies the cost of decisions leaders can’t see.

Knowing how people actually operate, not how they present themselves, has become a leading indicator of performance.

See that difference early, and you don’t just prevent waste. You turn it into an advantage.

You can’t coach or communicate your way out of what you can’t see.

But once you can see it, you can fix it — fast.

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