Ash Rathod

You already know storytelling is essential for your business and brand. But storytelling is much more than the words on your website, content and other communications. The right narrative can inform your short and long term strategy, help align your team, outmanoeuvre the competition and build a tribe of ambassadors.It can help you attract and retain the right customers who are willing to pay you more for a longer period of time and tell others to do the same.It's about high level performance. ie. increasing profits for the business and providing unique value to the people you serve.I specialise in guiding businesses do exactly this. My philosophy centres on a "Story-First Approach," a method that has proven to be the missing link for many who struggle with brand identity and growth.The challenge most people face when building a brand is twofold: either they're paralysed by indecision, never taking the first step, or they jump in headfirst, producing content without a coherent strategy. Both paths lead to a stagnant or unclear identity. The root cause? A lack of strategic direction.  I can help with that.---I studied media and communications specialising in script-writing, where my love for storytelling started. I worked in TV media alongside the London arm of global ad agencies such as StarCom, OMD, PHD Media and many smaller DRTV agencies. My portfolio stretched across global FMCG, (P&amp;G and Unilever) and automotive (Ford and Toyota) brands before moving to Turner Broadcasting (now Warner Bros. Discovery) to work on kids brands (such as Mattel and Hasbro). As the online world began to grow, I moved into Digital Marketing where I helped scale the Manchester office of a Bournemouth based media agency, going from media owner to client side, which consisted of a team of 20+ designers, marketers, copywriters and BDMs.Then after a short sales role at BT, I decided to start my own creative agency, to help start-ups to SMEs with with their communications online.This was almost 16 years ago. I'm proud to say I still run and I own that brand consultancy and design studio in the UK which has focused on serving start-ups to corporations over those years. Right now my focus covers:L&amp;D Training (1:1 &amp; Corporate teams)Speaking at eventsBrand Strategy workshops for start-ups and SMEs.None of these are an overnight fix.But if you are serious about shaping and growing your brand, I can help you do this faster than most.NB. My profile picture has been touched up with AI to change the colour of my shirt and  background

Brand Story Strategist | Managing Director

A brand strategy + design collective specializing in creating compelling content for digital communications. We work with forward-thinking founders, c-suite stakeholders, and marketing teams who passionately strive to lead the change in making the world of work a better place for all.

Our capabilities include:

Brand Strategy

  - Storytelling for brands 
  - Storytelling for leaders

Activation

  - Content Production
  - Media Planning

I fixed myself. 

AI has given me what I thought I could never have. 

A glimpse into what I’d look like if my skin colour stayed the same.

Or if I removed all the pigmentation on my skin (which can be done in real life. I had the option but declined) 

So which one do I prefer? For me, it’s a no brainer. The real me, in the middle. 

The left and right image was created by Nano Banana Pro. 

Which to be honest, as a tool, it’s amazing. In fact I’ve been playing with it a lot. I have been playing with a lot of AI tools. Image. Music. Vibe coding. And I will be using them a lot in my content, in my work processes and creating new business ideas. 

The next wave of AI tools will open doors for many people. I really am positive but cautious about it all.

Because it has to be used the right way and the right way for me is this:

Don’t be lazy with the tools (Use it to add a layer to the great work you do vs diluting it)
Don’t just blindly copy others. (‘differentiate or die’ mantra is still relevant. Now more than ever)
Don’t hide behind it (ie. pretend you’re something you’re not or try hiding the fact you’ve used AI. Especially if it’s likely to be in doubt for others)

I’m sure there are many other pros and cons. (let me know yours in the comments)

What I will be doing is making sure I inform my audience when I do use AI. For example, I am playing around creating a digital twin. And it's a lot of fun. But I won’t pretend it’s me. I’ll let others know when it’s not. Even when the tech becomes much better than it is now when even more  people won’t be able to tell. 

I think in this new phase, the people that are honest and upfront about how they communicate to their audience are going to be the ones that build trust. And ultimately the ones that win.

For me, I don’t want to fool anyone. Including myself. 

And more importantly. I don’t need to fix myself.

I already did that. 

When I accepted myself for who I really am.


---

#PersonalBranding and #Storytelling in an #AI world

Brand Storytelling in an AI World | Creative AI Workflow Consultant

This is not a real ad. 

And here's more context. 

I set myself a challenge to see what these AI tools were capable of and created this. My main learning out of all of this is, this still took a lot of human thinking, time and general input. 

So my challenge was to create a completely speculative ad using just AI tools. 

I chose a brand that I love. Love for their messaging and what they stand for. And then got to work. 

I would say this is still rough around the edges and an important thing to note is that I have no real idea what the brand strategy is so this should be considered. Real creative campaigns take time and a lot human collaboration. I did this completely on my own (and it shows I think :)  

There are also inconsistencies in the creative given the time I gave myself to create this. 

But in the main, I think the tools that are out there are really impressive. And I had a lot of fun with this. 

Tools I used were:

Weavy for workflow
LTX Studio for storyboarding
FreePik as the main base suite and character dev
Higgsfield (It's Popcorn element to experiment with characters)
Nano Banana for stills
Magnific for upscaling still resolutions 
Topaz to upscale video resolution
Kling 2.5 Turbo 2 for video
Seedream 4 Edit - Varied camera angles
Eleven Labs for VO and SFX
Suno for Music 

Then the usual tools I use:

Photoshop to retouch certain stills
After Effects for speed ramping elements
Premiere Pro for Editing

I plan to do a full walkthrough in the next few weeks if time permits ! :)

Would love to know your thoughts.


#Storytelling #AI

Anyone who says “AI content is quick and easy” is wrong. 

Well, sort of.

Producing AI creative content can be more efficient than many traditional methods but we’re not talking about a lot of the AI slop we’re accustomed to seeing on our feeds.

And those well versed in the traditional workflows (storytellers, designers, content strategists, ad creatives and marketing teams) shouldn't fear losing their jobs. If they up skill, they will actually rise to the top because they have the strongest superpower. Talent, experience and a way of thinking that comes from years of putting in the work that will make them stand out. 

But when working with clients or in collaboration with others, it’s important to have systems and workflows in place. This includes traditional workflows, not just AI. And by the way, the two still have a place in this world. It’s not as binary as many make out.

That’s why at DFC Studio we use Weavy. Weavy, (recently acquired by Figma) is a node based workflow system for creative AI work with a lot of the AI image and video tools in one place. It gives you, your team and clients an overview of the process from start to finish. 

Some clients won’t want to see this but some will. But for sharing and collaborating with your team it's great as it's important that you have systems in place that are transparent, repeatable and scalable. 

Or even if you’re working on your own you can go back quicker and reiterate/refine when client feedback comes back. 

If you’re interested in up skilling your team, At DFC Studio we offer consultancy and workshops to help you do this. These can be done in person or remote. If interested, please reach out (below or in my DM)

---

#Storytelling #Creative #AI #Marketing #Workshops

What Visionary Leaders Get Right About Brand

Brand isn’t just built by the things you do externally.

It's about how you show up internally too.

How your team feels every day.

In this weeks Watercooler Brand Talks (4pm Friday UK), we’ll be talking about the link between leadership, culture, and brand.

Why the strongest brands aren’t built by marketing teams alone. 

They’re shaped by the people leading from the front.

We’ll cover:

– What visionary leaders actually do differently
– How culture quietly builds (or breaks) your brand
– Why brand is the outcome, not the starting point

Join us live and definitely bring a question or two as we have two of the most visionary brand legends in this week as our secret guests who's brains you'll really want to pick.

This is going to be soooo much fun! See you there!

What Visionary Leaders Get Right About Brand

AI took me backwards, not forwards.

In a good way. 

The deeper I get into AI led creative work, the more I find myself leaning on traditional film theory.

At university, (many years ago :)) I specialised in script writing. Dialogue was the starting point, but it never stopped there. I fell into camera movement, physics, timing, weight, motion. How things enter a frame. How they leave it. Why something feels real even when we know it is not.

What fascinated me most was not learning the rules. It was learning them well enough to bend them. To stretch credibility without breaking belief. That’s the magic of film making. Whatever medium. To create moments that feel grounded, even when logic tells you they are constructed.

That mindset has been shaping my use of AI today.

The tools are new. The thinking is not.

If you treat AI as a shortcut, the output shows it. But if you approach it like film making, with intent, some restraint when needed, and an understanding of how humans read motion and story, the work will land very differently.

The recent sizzle reel is a snapshot of that experimentation. It’s not perfect but continuing to dig into what’s possible. 

Essentially storytelling principles wearing new clothes.

Those on the look for someone with a huge amount of experience with operations, delivery, automations, content production and more importantly leadership, Ryan is your man! 

If you're considering working with Ryan and want to speak to me then please do. 

A fab colleague he was.....and an extremely kind human being who is always ready to help, support, upskill and progress the team he works with.

What a loss to PodFirst and what a potentially huge gain for the next company that bags Ryan on their team!

Straight-Talking Guy | Cutting Through the Crap to Deliver Solutions, Growth, and Results That Actually Matter 💥

I have now left PodFirst and I am officially on the lookout for my next role. The timing isn’t perfect with Christmas approaching, but sometimes life pushes you into a new chapter sooner than expected. I made the decision because it was the right one for me and where I am heading next.

I am proud of what I achieved during my time there. It was challenging, fast paced and full of opportunities to grow, and I am grateful for the experience and everything I learned along the way.

For those who don’t know me well, here is what I bring to the table.

I am someone who cares about the work and the people involved. I take responsibility seriously and I show up fully. I work best in environments where pace, clarity and ownership matter. I enjoy solving problems, building systems, improving processes and keeping things moving even when things get busy. I thrive in roles where I can bring structure, calm and direction without losing the human side of it all.

My experience covers operations, delivery, leadership, automation, content production and working directly with clients to get projects over the line. I am at my best when I am trusted to own outcomes and make things happen.

So now I am looking for the right place to bring all of that into something new. If you hear of anything or know someone looking for someone with my skill set, I would really appreciate you pointing them my way.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me so far.

Onwards.

Michael Pedersen

DecideFast™

I built the world's first Behavior Pattern Interrupt™ App to eliminate procrastination, overthinking, and indecision in seconds.

Founder

Adaptive Design Strategist

-Business Breakthrough
-Digital Footprint Overhaul
-Your New Online Asset (Business Website)
-Proven Content Marketing Strategies
-LinkedIn Branding & Engagement
-Lead Generation
-Email Marketing

Unlock the full potential of your small business, entrepreneurship, or coaching venture with our Adaptive Design Strategist Company. We're about engineering your success, not just updating your digital look. Experience business transformation that leads to tangible benefits: increased brand authority, more qualified leads, and a boost in conversions. With us, every digital interaction is optimized for engagement, turning visitors into loyal customers. Our approach ensures that your online platform drives growth and opportunity. Embrace a future where your digital strategy aligns with your ambitions, propelling you towards success. Join us to build the extraordinary.

Adaptive Design Strategist (formerly AZ Net Marketing)

Peak Performance Partners

-Mindset Reset Transformation Call

Breakthrough Coaching empowers you to navigate career transitions and overcome professional stagnation. Our focused approach targets what holds you back, equipping you with strategies to make decisive moves. With us, you transform obstacles into launchpads for success, mastering the art of adaptability and resilience. Whether you're pivoting roles, scaling your business, or seeking renewed motivation, our coaching ensures you emerge more focused, capable, and ready to seize opportunities.

Peak Performance Coach

Revenue Growth | Emotion-Based Brand Messaging To 3x Your Revenues | Bridging the gap between sales and marketing

Too many B2B sales teams are generating a high volume of quotes/proposals—yet win rates remain lower than desired.

Opportunities stall or disappear quietly. Not because of pricing—but because critical conversion elements are missing from the system.

That’s where I come in.

I work with B2B companies between $5M and $20M to recover lost revenue by optimizing the entire sales infrastructure—from initial targeting to proposal acceptance.

It starts with the 21 Day Revenue Sprint™, a fast, high-impact engagement powered by my proprietary Revenue Performance System™.

In just a few weeks, most companies uncover $250K to $1M+ in recoverable opportunity already sitting in their pipeline.

We can go deeper.

As a strategic advisor, I can also work directly with your leadership and sales teams to implement the structural upgrades and behavioral shifts that drive sustained revenue growth—without adding headcount, increasing marketing spend, or flooding your pipeline with unqualified opportunities.

Clients regularly report 20x to 100x ROI from targeted, system-level improvements.

Key areas of focus include:
✔️ Precision prospect targeting and qualification
✔️ Streamlined sales process and deal progression
✔️ High-conversion proposals and buyer decision clarity
✔️ Follow-up strategies that re-engage stalled opportunities

If your team is consistently quoting high-value work but too many deals are fading without resolution—you don’t need more activity.

You need a system built to convert.

📧 mike@adaptivedesignstrategist.com
🗓 Book a 15-minute Revenue Clarity Call

CEO & Founder

Does your website convert? When was the last time you gave it a refresh? How does it compare to your competitors?

Your company website is your brand on the Internet. An under-performing and outdated website will cost you revenues. 

Let’s jump on a discovery call to see if we are good fit to work together 

Visit: www.AZNetmarketing.com or 
Email: mike@aznetmarketing.com

How many times today have you reached for your phone instead of tackling the hard thing?

Your brain is wired to avoid discomfort—and it's costing your company millions. Here's what's actually happening in your head, and the one solution that works in real-time.

Full breakdown 👇

Mike Pedersen

Eliminating Decision Drag And Productivity Losses | Working With CFO and COO To Protect Payroll | Founder DecideFast™ The Decision Acceleration System

View newsletter: The Human Performance Brief

Ever spend 20 minutes organizing your desk instead of starting the actual work? Your brain is doing that on purpose. Here's the uncomfortable truth: p

Open article: Why Your Brain Loves Procrastination (And What Actually Works) by Mike Pedersen • 4 min read

Why Your Brain Loves Procrastination (And What Actually Works)

Why leaders should focus on employee obsession and how it will impact so many critical aspects of the organization.

CFOs measure decision speed, but ignore decision drag and fatigue. This is costing companies millions of dollars and there's an easy fix.

If a CFO wants to see improvement in: 
1. Operational efficiency and workflow automation
2. Labor productivity and utilization
3. Margin protection and working-capital timing
4. Execution risk and organizational agility
5. Throughput and output acceleration
6. Cost of delay

The focus starts with giving employees relief in the moment of overwhelm, stuck and distracted. Solve that, and all six of these will be impacted greatly.

#cfo #operationalefficiency #decisiondrag #employeehesitation #DecideFast

The Missed Blind Spot Employees fight hesitation and distraction all day because work throws constant pressure at them. Micro stress points slow every

Open article: Employee Obsession. The Standard Every Leader Thinks They Follow but Rarely Do. by Mike Pedersen • 2 min read

Employee Obsession. The Standard Every Leader Thinks They Follow but Rarely Do.

The workforce doesn't slow because they don't care.

They're slow because clarity slipped somewhere between the third meeting and the tenth message.

Most leaders see the symptoms: 
→ Tasks stretching past estimates 
→ Approvals sitting too long 
→ Projects drifting into next week

What they miss is the exact moment work slowed down.

It's costing more than you think.

Most companies assume their biggest challenge is workload. Deadlines stack up. Priorities collide. People feel stretched thin. On the surface, it look

Open article: The Workday Slowdown No One Talks About by Mike Pedersen • 7 min read

Decision Acceleration is a term you will start hearing more often when it comes to protecting payroll, operational efficiency, decision speed and throughput. 

DecideFast™ created the Decision Acceleration category, the performance layer that converts the hidden slowdowns inside the workday into speed, output, and financial gain.

To better understand the impact on the organization and employees, read this article.

Every company measures output. Revenue. Productivity. Efficiency. But almost no company measures the force that quietly drags them all down. Decision 

Open article: Decision Acceleration: Why Fast Teams Outperform Everyone Else by Mike Pedersen • 4 min read

Decision Acceleration: Why Fast Teams Outperform Everyone Else

THE HIDDEN $6.5M DRAIN

Every company tracks labor cost.

But almost no company measures the one force that silently drains millions of dollars: daily decision drag.

The hesitation. The small delays. The quiet moments where an employee freezes for five or ten seconds because they're stuck, unsure, or overloaded.

Those moments feel small. They're not.

Here's the math for a 500-employee company:
➡️ 13 interruptions per worker per day (UC Irvine)
➡️ 23 minutes to return to focus after each one
➡️ 5 hours of recovery time per employee per week
➡️ 2,500 hours lost across the workforce weekly
➡️ At $50/hour = $125,000 per week
➡️ $6.5 million annual drag

And this leaves out the secondary effects: → Delayed approvals → Slowed workflows → Stretched timelines → Margin erosion, let alone employee morale and burnout.

This isn't a people problem. It's a measurement problem.

➡️ You may not see it in daily reports, but these micro-delays quietly erode efficiency and margins. Imagine the cumulative impact if those lost minutes were reclaimed across your entire workforce.

Companies fix what they can see. Decision latency has been invisible.
Until now.

DecideFast™ created the category of Decision Acceleration. It gives employees fast resets(clarity) that cut decision drag and raise throughput across the workforce. Productivity rises because people act faster with less friction at every moment of the day.

Even small gains across 500 to 1000+ workers produce meaningful financial returns.

“Decision acceleration is the instant clearing of mental friction so people act fast with sharp focus. It drives workforce speed, precision, and consistent execution.” - DecideFast™ 

“Most tools take months to roll out and still never get used. DecideFast™ impacts your workforce in the first hour.”

➡️ If you want to listen to a condensed podcast from our 7000 word article, you can have a listen on Spotify. It's only 4 minutes: https://lnkd.in/gACVRV8w

If you enjoy it, share it, like it, and follow our DecideFast™ podcast. We'd appreciate it. 

#coo #DecisionVelocity #OperationalExcellence #CFO #EnterprisePerformance

Innovative CFOs don’t sit on daily decision drag.

☑️ They eliminate hesitation.
☑️ They remove friction.
☑️ They clear bottlenecks.
☑️ They protect productivity.

➡️ They know slow decisions bleed hours.
➡️ They know overwhelmed employees stall output.
➡️ They know small moments of confusion turn into big operational losses.

✅ They never assume employees just need to try harder.
✅ They give teams support in the moments they are stuck.
✅ They make clarity a priority because clarity speeds up the entire company.
✅ They focus on real time solutions because real time is where work breaks down.

👎 They don’t wait for annual surveys to reveal the obvious.
👎 They don’t lean on programs that never get used.
👎 They don’t pretend burnout and hesitation fix themselves.
👎 They fix what slows people down before it turns into cost.

That is the mindset that wins.

➡️ If you want to see how DecideFast™ helps eliminate decision drag and productivity losses, reach out. It will be the best 5-minute call you've had this year.

#cfo #coo #decisiondrag #operationalefficiency

Image credit: Business Infographics

$37,000,000 Gone You Won't See On A P&L

I did a DecideFast™ demo with an HR leader, and she was quite excited after she "felt it." 

She blurted out excitedly how productivity will go through the roof. I proceeded to tell her some shocking numbers. 

Only 3 out of 8 hours are truly productive—this “silent loss” is supported by research from Gallup, McKinsey, and HBR.

Let's consider a 1,000-employee company with an average annual salary of $60,000.

Calculation Details
➡️ Daily productivity loss: About $156,620.
➡️ Annual loss: $156,620 × 240 working days = $37,588,800.

This is a very conservative number; it is more like 250, as studies show the average number of workdays minus 11 holidays, and average PTO (10-12 days).

If you're a CFO reading this, you should work closely with your HR leaders to implement solutions that meet the needs (in the moment) of your workforce when they are overwhelmed, stuck, or burned out, which happens to 10-20 times every day.

You can't survey your way to more productivity. Nor can you meditate on it. It's time for an innovative solution to solve this $37M problem on demand and at scale.

DecideFast™  — Tap → Reset → Act

The only on-demand Employee Reset Solution™, giving your people instant relief from indecision, stuck, and overwhelm—at scale, in just 15 seconds, up to 20 times a day.

No onboarding, no training, just immediate clarity and forward movement for your entire workforce.

Millions of dollars in lost productivity can be recovered every year with faster decision-making speed—measured, delivered, and scaled through DecideFast™.

We are opening up two low-risk pilots to prove data and roll it out.

If you're an HR leader, don't wait until 2026. Let's schedule your 5-minute demo today! No slides. No pitch. Just experience it.

At DecideFast™, our mission is to ignite Human Innovation—helping every employee reset, refocus, and perform at their best in real time. We’re here to restore energy, clarity, and confidence across the workforce, one decision at a time.

➡️ What's it worth to your company to protect your culture, productivity, and retention? This is not a nice-to-have. It's mission critical!

#cfo #workplaceproductivity #employeeeexperience

Image credit: SelectSoftware Reviews

Eliminating Decision Drag And Productivity Losses | Working With CFO and COO To Bring ROI To The Bottom Line | Creator of DecideFast™ The Decision Acceleration System

The Quiet Part of Work No One Talks About

Look at this image.
This is what employees carry through a single workday.
Most of it never gets said out loud.

HR sees the reports.
CFOs/COOs see the numbers.
But those numbers are lagging indicators.
They only show the damage after it spreads.

The real story sits inside the moments you see in this image:
➡️ the hesitation
➡️ the doubt
the mental stall
➡️ the quiet pressure that slows people down.

This is where performance rises or drops.
This is where culture strengthens or cracks.
This is where people decide whether they speak up, shut down, or check out.

Traditional programs measure what happened last month.
They miss what employees fight today.

DecideFast™ gives instant relief in the moments employees feel overwhelmed or stuck.
Real-time clarity.
Real-time stability.
Real-time momentum.

No waiting for surveys.
No long modules.
No programs people avoid.

This is the new frontier of workforce performance.

Support employees in the moments that shape their day, and the culture shifts fast.

➡️ Attn CFOs and COOs. If burnout rises, turnover climbs, and output keeps slipping, the guesswork has gone on long enough—time for a real conversation.

"Human Innovation starts with people, not policy. DecideFast™ gives employees the instant resets they need to think clearer, act faster, and leave work with energy. That’s how we improve human potential at scale."

#hr #humanpotential #employeeexperience #workforceculture #decidefast #employeesareyourbusiness

The real cost inside the workday!

Every CFO has buckets they monitor with precision. 
➡️ Operational efficiency. 
➡️ Labor productivity. 
➡️ Throughput. 
➡️ Cost of delay. 
➡️ Workforce stability. 
➡️ Agility and execution risk. 

These buckets decide how fast a company grows or falls behind.

What most leaders miss is the root cause hiding inside all six. 
➡️ Employees get stuck. 
➡️ They get overwhelmed. 
➡️ They get distracted. 
It happens dozens of times per day across hundreds or thousands of people. 

The financial impact climbs into the millions before anyone sees it.

There has never been a real solution for those moments. Not surveys, wellness, or meditation apps. They are all lagging indicators (too late).

Nothing that meets employees in the exact second they hesitate (until now). 

Nothing that cuts through the overwhelm and gets them back into action fast.

That gap is massive and measurable. 

That gap is why companies are paying for slow decisions, lost output, and stalled execution without realizing where the leak begins.

DecideFast™  sits inside that gap. 
✅ It resets employees in seconds. 
✅ It restores clarity when they need it most. 
✅ It accelerates decisions at scale.

CFOs can ignore noise. They cannot ignore the cost leaking out every single day due to hesitation and distraction.

“DecideFast™ sits at the intersection of decision speed, execution efficiency, and operational capacity.”

Image credit: SelectSoftware Reviews

DecideFast™ The Decision Acceleration System

#cfo #workforceproductivity #decisionacceleration

Most leaders like to think they're running lean.
Often they are not, they're just spending less.

There's a difference.

Lean isn't about cutting budgets. It's about protecting payroll and controlling labor costs while eliminating waste.

👎 But here's what actually happens: CFOs see $8 million disappearing every year and call the fix an unnecessary expense.

Employees are productive 36% of the day. Every distraction burns 23 minutes of recovery time.

In a 500-person company, that's roughly $8 million in annual losses from decision drag and context switching.

Employees aren't to blame. 

When the brain experiences stress, it seeks immediate relief. 

That relief shows up as distraction—over two hours daily on phones, more than an hour on social media, the rest in texting, email, and YouTube. 

It's not a character flaw. It's how the human brain works under pressure.

➡️ Labor is the largest expense on the P&L. Protecting that investment means eliminating the factors that erode it.

Lean companies still invest in anything that protects payroll and execution. That is real leanness. Ignoring hard numbers is not leanness. It is cost denial dressed up as discipline.

➡️ Most finance teams never calculate the cost of decision drag.
Some see the numbers and the investment required don't fit the current budget narrative.

CFOs optimize labor cost per unit. Gross margin. Operating leverage.
But improving operational efficiency means protecting the throughput already on payroll.

➡️ Most companies spend millions to analyze slowdowns while the real losses happen in the seconds no dashboard can see. They measure everything except the drag that hits execution and inflates payroll cost. 

A consultant I spoke with on LinkedIn put it simply: "Easy for leaders to ignore what they choose not to believe."

The gap between what's being paid for and what's being delivered is sitting in these numbers.

The question is whether they get acted on or ignored.

➡️ DecideFast™ is offering 60-second demos. No slides or pitch. Just experience it. If you're a CFO or COO wanting to improve operational efficiency, throughput and protect your payroll, this is your solution.

➡️ ➡️ “Every solution promises performance after rollout. DecideFast™ delivers it on day one.”

#cfo #workforcecapacity #workforceefficiency #protectpayroll

Why Decision Speed Is Now a Must

Market data makes one thing crystal clear: decision speed and organizational agility are top strategic priorities for enterprises in 2025 and beyond.

➡️ Nearly 50% of senior leaders say accelerating decision-making is essential to thrive—up 10 points since 2021. 
➡️ 47% report that lagging agility costs significant profit, a rising concern compared to just 37% in 2021. 
➡️ Faster decision speed correlates directly with higher operational performance and competitive advantage. 
➡️ Yet only 28% of leaders feel truly ready to adapt as markets shift, signaling a major gap to close. 

 The message is clear: Focusing on reducing decision drag, hesitation, and speed is what executives need to survive in this fast-paced world we live in. Decision speed is simple, measurable, and directly tied to survival and success in volatile markets.

➡️ ➡️ "Every slowdown has a price. Most leaders pretend the leak is small because they have no solution to stop it."

Most current programs focus on lagging indicators, such as surveys, engagement, and wellness. If you want your company to survive, you must reevaluate the programs you are investing in and ask yourself this…
…“Is this helping our workforce in real time, or is it late?”

DecideFast™ is the decision acceleration system that turns hesitation into speed across your entire organization.

➡️ We are opening up 2 pilots before the end of this year. 100 users, 30 days. Data and proof are the intention. 

➡️ Are you a growth-minded leader who won’t accept the status quo? If so, reach out, and I’ll show you DecideFast™ live. It will be the fastest demo call you’ve ever had. No slides or pitch. Just experience it. 

“Most solutions take months to roll out and still never get used. DecideFast™ impacts your workforce in the first hour.”

CFOs are under more pressure than ever: 65% say their boards want to see fast, measurable ROI from technology and productivity investments—the clock is ticking on every dollar spent.

Yet the reality inside most organizations?

$500 billion a year is lost across US enterprises to micro-hesitation, slowed decisions, and operational drag. 

A Fortune 500 company can lose up to 530,000 manager-days annually—often $250 million in payroll—because decision drag stalls projects and drains throughput. 

PwC reports that over half of executives admit they’re missing major business opportunities because teams can’t decide fast enough. 

But here’s the paradox:
➡️ Most “productivity” tools add complexity, require extra steps, and push employees to absorb yet another framework. People don’t want another workstream—they want relief, in the moment, when they’re truly stuck.

High-performing CFOs, those who outperform their peers, spend almost half their time on forward-looking strategy, not backward-looking reporting. They know that the true lever is helping teams move at business speed, not just adding more dashboards.

➡️ The next era of productivity will belong to those who can eliminate unnecessary complexity and enable teams to reset and move forward when it counts most.

➡️ It's time the corporate world woke up, fixed these million-dollar costs, and stopped ignoring these numbers. Who's bold enough to step forward?

“DecideFast™ sits at the intersection of decision speed, execution efficiency, and operational capacity.”

➡️ New Cost Calculator 

If you want to see what your number looks like, we can walk through the calculator together. Let’s get you on the schedule!

#CFO #DecisionAcceleration #Productivity #OperationalExcellence #BusinessStrategy

Three factors. Most companies measure none of them.

Decision Speed. Decision Drag. Decision Fatigue.

CFOs do not have a way to track these, nor have they tracked any of them.

They track outcomes. Revenue per employee. Project delivery. Deals closed.

But they're not measuring the decision layer—the invisible friction that sits between effort and execution.

Decision Speed 
How fast people move once they know the next step.

Decision Drag 
The slowdown that happens in the moment, inside the second, before anything starts. This is the invisible delay. The hesitation before the first action. The mental friction of figuring out what matters when everything feels urgent.

Decision Fatigue 
The psychological load that builds over the day and makes every choice heavier than the last.

By midday, the brain has burned through hundreds of micro-decisions. Email. Slack. Meetings. Priorities are shifting every hour. Each one pulls capacity until even simple choices feel impossible.

It's 2pm. Someone on your team has six things on their list. They stare at the screen for three minutes deciding which one to start.

That's not laziness. That's Decision Drag and Decision Fatigue compounding in real time.

Employees aren't to blame. The brain under cognitive load doesn't speed up. It delays and distracts to seek relief.

Measuring outcomes while ignoring the decision layer is like tracking how fast a car goes while ignoring that the engine keeps stalling and the driver is exhausted.

CFOs are being asked to cut costs and improve margins without clear visibility into where the money is actually going.

➡️ Headcount is the largest line item. Protecting it means knowing what's eroding it.

Most finance teams are reacting—defending budgets, justifying spend, trying to do more with less.

But they don't have the numbers that show where throughput is actually being lost.

➡️ Efficient companies invest in anything that protects payroll and execution. 

The gap between what's being paid for and what's being delivered lives in these three numbers.

Most leadership teams don't know what those numbers are.

The ones who do can't ignore them.

➡️ For those CFOs who want to protect payroll, improve operational efficiency, and throughput, DecideFast™ is the decision acceleration system that can solve this in real time, with no onboarding or friction. You see the impact in the first hour!

#cfo #operationalefficiency #throughput #payrollprotection

Meetings Are Quietly Bleeding Companies!

Most leaders know meetings slow things down.
Few understand the financial damage.

Here is what the data shows:

🚫 36 to 56 million meetings happen in the US every day
Source: UNC Charlotte
🚫 71 percent of meetings are unproductive
Source: Korn Ferry
🚫 Employees spend 31 hours a month in unnecessary meetings
Source: Atlassian
🚫 Inefficient meetings cost US companies $399 billion per year
Source: Doodle “State of Meetings” Report
🚫 Executives lose an average of 23 hours a week to meetings
Source: Harvard Business Review

That is not a scheduling problem.
That is an friction problem.

Employees do not need more meetings. They need clarity in the moment.
The meeting happens because the work slowed down long before the calendar invite.

This is where DecideFast™ steps in.

✅ A fast reset on their phone.
✅ Used in seconds. 
✅ Restores focus before the slowdown turns into another meeting no one wants.

➡️ Cut meeting load.
➡️ Increase throughput.
➡️ Protect payroll.

We built a Decision Drag Cost Calculator for CFOs to plug in their numbers to see the hit their company is taking that no tech stack is fixing!

5-minute call and we'll show it to you and discuss how we both can fix this together. 

➡️ If you want to see how this plays out inside your organization, send a message and we'll set up this 5-minute call. No pitch. No slides. 

#cfos #DecideFast #finance #companyculture

The most expensive problems in your company are not the big ones.
They’re the tiny ones happening all day.

➡️ Micro-behaviors.
➡️ Overload.
➡️ Decision fatigue.
➡️ Short attention shifts.
➡️ In-the-moment hesitation.
➡️ The quiet pauses nobody tracks.

This is where the real slowdown happens.
This is where execution slips.
This is where companies lose millions in lower productivity and throughput without seeing it.

Employees aren’t failing.
Their brains hit a wall for a few seconds at a time.
Those seconds turn into minutes and compound across the workforce.

👉 That’s the real cost every CFO feels, even if they can’t trace it.

The companies that win are the ones that...
➡️ Support employees in these exact moments 10-20 times a day across the workforce.

When an employee gets clear fast, the whole organization moves more efficiently and quicker.

It's time to make a change! Employee survey and wellness programs are not solving this. They are lagging indicators. They are too late! 

➡️ Human Innovation starts with people, not policy. DecideFast™ gives employees instant mental resets they need to think clearer, act faster, and leave work with energy. That’s how we improve human potential at scale, and directly affect the bottom line!

We are offering enterprise leaders who are open to change and want their employees to have a solution that truly helps them, a 60-second DecideFast™ demo to feel it for yourself. 

Contact me and we'll set up a 5-minute call. No slides or pitch. Just experience it. 

“Most tools take months to roll out and still never get used. DecideFast™ impacts your workforce in the first hour.”

Most companies keep staring at workflow, while the real loss lives in the decision layer.

We obsess over revenue per employee, project delivery, ticket throughput, deals closed. All outcome metrics. None of them explain why a paid workday moves slow even when people are “working.”

Here is the part finance teams rarely name.

➡️ Decision Speed
How fast paid hours turn into output.

➡️ Decision Drag
Where payroll leaks before work even starts.

➡️ Decision Fatigue
Mental overload that quietly shrinks daily capacity.

➡️ Execution Flow
How consistently your labor investment produces.

Dashboards flag bottlenecks. Surveys confirm stress. BI tools paint the picture in fifteen different views. Then you look up a month later, and the same teams are still moving slowly. That is not a reporting issue. That is a decision-layer issue.

Think about a typical afternoon.
It is 2pm. A high performer has six priorities on their screen. Everything feels urgent. Nothing feels clear. Three minutes go by. Then ten. No one logs that moment anywhere. Yet payroll is still running.

Multiply that across hundreds or thousands of people and you see the problem. 

You are paying full price for capacity that gets chipped away by hesitation, overload, and unclear calls. Not because people are lazy. Because the system gives them data without giving them a fast reset when they hit that wall.

CFOs are being asked to cut costs and protect margins while the biggest leak sits between “I see the issue” and “We made the decision.” That space is invisible in most models. Which means the true cost never shows up where it should.

If you lead finance, this is the next frontier.
You do not need another dashboard. You need visibility into how fast decisions move, where they slow down inside the day, and how much paid capacity you lose there.

The companies that choose to measure and improve these four forces will run circles around the ones that keep polishing reports.

That’s what we solve at DecideFast™—real-time mental resets for your entire workforce. Decision acceleration compounds across the organization, protecting payroll, increasing operational efficiency, and decreasing labor cost leakage.

➡️ It's time the corporate world woke up, fixed these million-dollar costs, and stopped ignoring them. Who's bold enough to step forward?

Low Risk:
100 users. 30 days. Gather data (proof). Workforce rollout.

“DecideFast™ sits at the intersection of decision speed, execution efficiency, and operational capacity.”

#CFO #DecideFast #decisiondrag #workforceperformance

Labor costs are not the real problem.

The real problem is how much paid time never turns into real work.

➡️ Leaders feel it every day.
➡️ Teams look busy.
➡️ Projects slip.
➡️ Payroll grows.
➡️ Capacity feels capped.

Yet the cuts always attack the same levers.

🚫 They automate.
🚫 They merge roles.
🚫 They outsource.
🚫 They push managers harder.
🚫 They swap fixed and variable costs.

All of that moves numbers.
None of it fixes what happens inside the day.

Here is where the money leaks.
Your people lose minutes when:
✔️ They hesitate on a priority
✔️ They replay the same issue in their head
✔️ They bounce between tasks with no clear next step
✔️ They sit in mental overload and reach for their phone

Those minutes never show on a report.
They hit EBITDA anyway.

There is a sixth lever leaders rarely name.

✅ Recover lost time.
✅ Strengthen managers without adding people.
✅ Reduce daily friction inside the shift.
✅ Increase capacity from the team you already have.
✅ Boost role output through clarity, not pressure.

That is what DecideFast™ is built for.

Employees hit a wall.
They type what is going on.
They get a sharp reset in seconds.

You are not cutting labor.
You are finally getting what you already pay for.

➡️ Finally a solution your workforce will use and actually enjoy it. Adoption and usage is built in like no other tool.

Are you a CFO/COO or manager that wants the best for your workforce and at the same time recover millions lost? 

➡️ It's time to acknowledge the gap the existing tech stack will never close.

DecideFast™ Decision Acceleration System 
Reducing wasted hours, slow decisions, and daily friction that erodes productivity.

#cfo #leadership #laborcosts #DecideFast

THE CATEGORY THAT DIDN'T EXIST

Every major enterprise category emerged when companies finally recognized a critical missing layer:
→ Infrastructure created cloud adoption 
→ CRM created sales visibility
→ HCM created workforce structure 
→ Cybersecurity created digital trust
→ Decision Acceleration (created by DecideFast™) creates control over the seconds that drive execution speed.

This category didn't exist because the problem was invisible.

🚫 Systems couldn't see when an employee paused. 
🚫 Managers couldn't detect micro-delays. 
🚫 Dashboards couldn't capture seconds of internal uncertainty.
🚫 But the cost was real:

➡️ McKinsey shows companies with faster decision cycles achieve 5% higher EBITDA margins.

➡️ Bain shows companies with high decision velocity grow revenue 2.5x faster than slow organizations.

The slowdown inside the moment has always existed. 

Companies just accepted it as normal because they lacked a way to observe it, quantify it, or improve it.

Now that layer is visible. Now it can be influenced. Now it can be improved.

Decision Acceleration is the category we built to eliminate the drag that slows every workforce. 

DecideFast™ The Decision Acceleration System

See the full category breakdown → https://lnkd.in/gGRPkwHj

#NewCategory #DecisionVelocity #EnterpriseSoftware #DigitalTransformation

Most “workflow bottlenecks” aren’t workflow problems.

They’re decision problems hiding inside dashboards.

Every ops leader says the same thing:
“We can see the bottlenecks. The dashboards light up. The surveys confirm it.
But weeks later… the work is still stuck.”

Dashboards, surveys, and BI tools are great at surfacing friction. 
They are not effective at clearing it.​

Here’s what no one wants to admit:
Work isn’t waiting on data. It’s waiting on a decision.

Tasks don’t stall in Jira or Asana. They stall in people’s heads.
“We’re blocked” really means “No one feels safe or clear enough to move.”​

Workflow tools were built to track stuck work.

They were never built to give people a mental reset and accelerate decisions in real time.​

That’s the gap DecideFast™ was built to close.
It gives your people an on‑demand mental reset and improves decision acceleration in real time, the moment they get stuck:
✅ Break the cognitive jam.
✅ Create fast, aligned decisions.
✅ Protect payroll from another afternoon of “spinning.”​

Bottlenecks shouldn’t just be visible.
They should be short-lived.

If your dashboards keep telling you the same story every month, you don’t have a reporting problem.
➡️ You have a decision latency problem.

That’s what we solve at DecideFast™—real-time mental resets for your entire workforce. Decision acceleration compounds across the organization, protecting payroll, increasing operational efficiency, and decreasing labor cost leakage.

➡️ It's time the corporate world woke up, fixed these million-dollar costs, and stopped ignoring them. Who's bold enough to step forward?

“DecideFast™ sits at the intersection of decision speed, execution efficiency, and operational capacity.”

CFOs carry pressure most people never see.

 ✅ Every number.
 ✅ Every timeline.
 ✅ Every slowdown in the business hits their desk.

Yet one thing separates the decisive CFO from the comfortable one.

The decisive CFO acts when the math is clear.

The comfortable CFO waits for January.
Both reveal who they are.

Here’s the truth.
➡️ Employees get stuck ten to twenty times a day.
➡️ Those moments cost paid hours that never turn into output (millions).
 
And nothing in the tech stack touches it.

The pressure on CFOs is real.

The waste inside the workday is real.

And there is a solution built for the exact gap every company carries.

Decisive CFOs don’t wait for clean calendars.
➡️ They act when the loss is staring them in the face.

For the bold CFOs who don’t wait for perfect timing.

➡️ 100 users.
➡️ 30 days.
➡️ Pure data.
Roll it out in January with confidence, not guesswork. ROI hits the first week.
No onboarding. No training. No friction. Scales to 10,000 employees or more.

➡️ DecideFast™ is the decision acceleration system built for the gap that nothing in your tech stack touches.

#cfo #workforceperformance #DecideFast #decisiondrag

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