How much is misalignment costing your business?

When teams aren’t strategically aligned, the cost is far greater than “lost time.” Instead, they burn real dollars on work that won’t move the business.

Use this calculator to estimate the cost of a misaligned initiative based on team size, average salary, and time spent. If only part of the work was wasted, adjust the % of time wasted slider. Then apply a fully-loaded multiplier to reflect benefits and overhead, and see what that same budget could have funded instead.

Bad Strategy Cost Calculator

Bad Strategy Cost Calculator

Estimate how much “time spent on the wrong initiatives” costs in salary dollars — and what that money could have funded instead.

Number of employees on the project
Average annual salary per employee (USD)
Weeks spent
Work weeks per year (assumption) Default: 52
% of time wasted (misaligned work)
100%
Use 100% if the initiative was fully wasted; otherwise estimate partial waste.
Fully-loaded cost multiplier
1.35×
Captures benefits, overhead, tools, taxes, etc. (common range: ~1.25–1.60).
Estimated *wasted* cost (salary × time wasted × fully-loaded)
$0
Total project cost (100% of time)
$0
Wasted cost (before fully-loaded multiplier)
$0
Cost per week (team, base)
$0
Employee-weeks
0
Per-employee cost for this period (base)
$0
Equivalent FTE-years wasted
0
Formulas Base project cost = employees × (salary ÷ workWeeksPerYear) × weeks  |  Wasted (base) = base project cost × wastePct  |  Wasted (fully-loaded) = wasted (base) × multiplier

Opportunity cost (editable examples)

These are placeholders — change them to match the initiatives you want to “fund instead.”

Copy-ready narrative

Note: this estimates salary-based delivery cost. It does not include vendor spend, agency fees, or downstream costs of delay.

Tip: In the Opportunity Cost section, you’re answering: “If we hadn’t spent this money on the wrong initiative, what could we have funded instead?”

How to use it:

  • Review the examples: Each line is a placeholder initiative (e.g., “Strategy sprint,” “Onboarding redesign”) with a cost per initiative.

  • Edit the costs: Update the dollar amount to match what those initiatives would realistically cost in your world (internal time, contractor fees, or a blended estimate).

  • Rename items to fit your context: Click the initiative name to rename it to something relevant to your audience (e.g., “New onboarding track,” “Certification pilot,” “Measurement framework build”).

  • Read the multiplier result: The calculator uses your wasted, fully-loaded cost and shows how many times you could fund each initiative (the “X×” count).

    • Example: If wasted cost is $180,000 and “Enablement build” is $60,000, it will show 3×.