Case study № 01
Name withheldHow a $90M Australian founder-led business reduced executive decision latency by 40% in 90 days.
Anchor client A · founder-led professional services · $90M AUD revenue · 180 employees · Sydney + Melbourne
The situation
Three years of flat EBITDA on rising revenue. The executive team had stopped disagreeing in front of each other. The CEO was carrying the business home on Sunday nights and could not explain why. Engagement survey scored 78%; vendor benchmark said five points above the industry band.
The instrumentation
One quarter of Fractions of Friction instrumentation across the executive team (n=11) plus a randomly stratified slice of the front line (n=44). Weekly seven-minute signal capture. Cognitive Profile administered to the entire executive team in week two.
What the instrument found
Node 01
Decision drag on three named strategic decisions accounted for an estimated $4.1M of forgone margin in the prior 12 months — none of which appeared on any internal report.
Node 02
Two of the four most senior leaders held inverted cognitive orientations on strategic risk — and had been routing around each other for fourteen months.
Node 03
The 78% engagement score was statistically uncorrelated with the friction loading on the operating cadence. The two instruments were measuring different things.
The named move
Two of the three monetisable friction nodes named in the quarterly report were closed inside 60 days; the third moved to a six-month execution plan.
The result
0%
decision latency reduced in 90 days
- Executive decision latency reduced by 40% across the three named decisions by the end of quarter one.
- The leadership team renewed the program for a second year before the first quarter closed.
The Friction Report told us what our engagement survey never could: which decisions our leadership team was stalling on, and why.
The next move
Book a Friction Read.
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