# SCAR Advantage — full context

> We find the decision costing an organisation the most money, fix it in 30 days, and make sure it does not come back.

Practice: SCAR Advantage™, a decision intervention practice.
People: David Maclean (Founder and CEO), Mike Jansen (Practice Partner).
Location: Cape Town, South Africa. Engagements globally.
Site: https://scaradvantage.com/

## What the practice does

Every organisation carries decisions that were made for a reason that has since passed. The fix stayed after the problem left. SCAR Advantage calls that leftover a scar, and calls what it costs now decision drag: the days, escalations and money spent on a decision that should already be made.

The client names one real decision that is stuck. SCAR Advantage prices the drag, clears the decision inside thirty days, and makes sure it does not come back.

## What a client gets

1. One real decision that is stuck right now is named. The one whose movement would change the greatest number of decisions that follow it.
2. Inside thirty days, that decision is cleared, made and acted on, worked in the client's own business with the executives who own it.
3. It holds after the engagement closes, and the movement is proved on the numbers.

The method used to surface and clear decision drag is proprietary and is not published. It is discussed inside an engagement.

## The 30-Day Decisive Loop™

The four-week form of the work, run inside the client's real decision. No simulation, no case study, no workshop or diagnostic conducted away from the business. Four stages: Surface, Craft, Apply, Reinforce. The engagement closes at Day 30 with a board-ready impact report, and finance confirms financial impact at Day 90.

## The four measures

Every organisation runs two clocks: trigger to decision, and decision to completed action. A business can score well on the first and still lose millions on the second. Both are read.

| Measure | Measured | What it captures |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Decision speed | Day 30 | Clock one. Days from trigger to an owned call |
| Execution speed | Day 30 | Clock two. Days from the call to the agreed action being completed |
| Executive escalation | Day 30 | How often it goes up a level when it belongs at a lower level |
| Financial impact | Day 90 | What was done, when, what it cost and what it saves, confirmed by finance |

Baselined at intake with the client finance function.

## Who it is for

Primary: mergers and acquisitions, private equity, business rescue.
Secondary: founder-led businesses and family offices.
Worked examples are published for each primary arena, anonymised through NDA.

## People

David Maclean, Founder and CEO. More than two decades helping organisations improve how they learn, lead and make decisions. Holds an MA, MBA and MPhil. Author of UNPLAN: Stop Optimising and Start Progressing. Associate faculty at Henley Business School. Author of the forthcoming white paper Organisational Kintsugi (expected 2026).

Mike Jansen, Practice Partner. Three decades rescuing complex programmes and organisational change initiatives. Works with executives on the leadership reflex shaping a decision so the team can replace it deliberately.

## Publications

SCAR Papers, published at https://scaradvantage.com/papers:
- The most expensive decision (foundational)
- The deal closed. The decisions didn't
- New ownership, old decisions
- Succession is today's decisions
- When approval became the business
- The rescue plan

## Engagement

Start at https://scaradvantage.com/contact. The client does not need to work out the cause first; they only need to name the decision.