A quiet leak may be draining your margins, energy, and trust.
There’s a number most teams don’t track. It’s neither on your dashboard nor is it discussed in reviews. Yet, unknowingly, it’s affecting everything, starting from delivery timelines to team morale and business outcomes.
It’s the shadow cost. And it often shows up as rupee leakage from rework and delays.
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐥𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬
We often celebrate launches, track KPIs, and monitor growth. But behind every successful delivery, very often, there is a trail of inefficiency that we quietly normalize.
For instance
- Specs re-written at the last minute
- Fixes that should’ve been caught in the first cycle
- Calls to “align” on things that should’ve been clear
- Work paused because someone was waiting for a dependency that never came
We brush such events off as part of the process. But over time, these very, seemingly harmless occurrences, become systemic as well as expensive.
𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐦𝐬
Rupee leakage doesn’t just hurt profit but
it drains trust between teams. Leads to defensive behavior.
Creates a culture of firefighting, not forward momentum.
And most importantly,. it is unavoidable.
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞?
Here’s what I mean by tracking this hidden KPI:
- 𝐄𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤: How many cycles are spent fixing the same task?
- 𝐃𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬: How much time do projects lose waiting for clarity or alignment?
- 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐩𝐬: How often are things built wrong because the task wasn’t understood?
- 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭-𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩-𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭-𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐬: How frequently is work paused, reshuffled, or reset?
These don’t get captured in standard metrics. But they’re real and they compound over time.
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐞𝐭 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐟𝐭
Most teams focus on output metrics like what did we ship, when, and how much value did it create? But high-performance cultures also focus on friction metrics like where are we losing time, energy, and clarity? Even a rough estimate of rework hours or delayed days can start a conversation. And from conversation comes insight, and from insight comes change.
𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥
This doesn’t mean you need to add a complex tracker. All you need to do is become aware of the hidden costs in your system.
- Run a retrospective purely focused on rework
- Ask teams to flag one area where delays are routine
- Begin noting how much “unseen work” happens to correct what wasn’t aligned
More than perfection the goal is visibility.
Final thought
Once you start seeing things with a new lens you will become one of the best businesses that get curious about what’s not visible.
Often, the biggest levers for improvement aren’t in what you do. They are in what you keep doing twice.
