Follow-Through Lag — Time Drain Calculator | Productivity Pit Stop

Follow-Through Lag

Measure how much capacity drains away when decisions are made but never fully land

Your Team

How many people are on this team?

Follow-Through Lag — Reality Check

Research* shows 25 to 50% of meeting time produces no lasting result:

Decisions made in meetings that quietly disappear
Actions allocated but never followed through
The same issues on the agenda week after week
Other teams waiting on commitments that drift

*Sources:

- Meeting follow-through: McKinsey Global Institute, collaboration and productivity research

- Meeting effectiveness: Harvard Business Review, "Stop the Meeting Madness" (updated 2024)

- Productive meetings: Bain and Company, "The Time-Starved Executive" study

Your meetings may be well run. But when people leave the room — how much of what was decided actually happens?

Most things get done — we follow through the majority of the time About half the time — some things land, others drift Honestly, less than half happens — Follow-Through Lag is real here Let me enter my own estimate

What percentage of meeting decisions actually get implemented? (Enter the gap — e.g. if 60% get done, enter 40)

Your Follow-Through Lag — The Drain

Monthly Capacity Drained by Follow-Through Lag

0 hours

0 hours per year

Full-Time Equivalent (FTE)

Full-time people worth of capacity lost annually

This represents 0% of your team's capacity draining away through decisions that never fully land.

And this does not include the open loops never resolved, the trust lost with other teams waiting on commitments, or the momentum that erodes when the same issues keep reappearing.

Plug this drain this week

The number above is an estimate. Here is how to measure your own reality — and start plugging the drain.

Pick one meeting from last week. Just one. Write down every decision or action that came out of it — as best you can remember.

Check each one. Was it done? Partially done? Not started? Not even remembered? Be honest — this is for you, not for anyone else.

Count the gaps. That ratio — completed versus agreed — is your team's real follow-through rate. Not an estimate. Your actual number.

Name it in your next meeting. Not as blame — as data. "We agreed six things last week. Three happened. Let us talk about why." That conversation is where the drain gets plugged.

Ready to plug this drain?

The Find & Fix Session is a focused 20-minute diagnostic on where your team's time is actually going, built around what you've just found. You'll leave with one practical fix to start applying this week.

Book the Find & Fix Session

Curious about your other drains? See all six — but Follow-Through Lag is where we'd start.

Productivity Pit Stop · www.productivitypitstop.co.za · 082 PERFORM · We do not manage time. We recover it.