Ascending authority, descending knowledge
The catalyst for this article was a story from someone working in a national sized, multi-billion dollar organisation. A project manager wanted a change approved on their project worth $2,000, it ended up needing to go to the CFO for approval. This seems nuts, it is nuts, but it exists everywhere. Even when the people up the hierarchy used to do the job which the current experts occupy, they often don’t have the context with which to make a decision, making it even more nuts. The title of this article does not say “descending intelligence,” although sometimes in clouds of frustration some people might want to say that, it’s not an intelligence thing, the people asking for approval have the intelligence (and the context), so we’re in the situation where the hierarchy effect can mess with us again if we’re not paying attention.
It’s sometimes difficult to stay generous on this subject, approvals processes often seem to be a poorly disguised power trip, often the questions asked by the appointed overlords fall into the basket of trying to add value where there is none, often the delegated authority for very senior professional people is set oddly low, which gives rise to the need to go and ask, please sir, can I have some more. Just for some context here, Charles Handy when working in a senior position at Shell used to have a sign off authority of $50, at a time when he oversaw millions worth of work!
It seems that the original intent has again been lost, and what is left is something that does not serve the organisation well, in the origin story above, the cost of sending the approval 8 rungs up the ladder will have cost multiple times the value of the change.
There are many situations in business where experts have to ask for approval for things, from people who are not experts. The key here is what the approval is for. If it’s permission to make a change, what’s the reason for asking for permission, let’s just be sure that it’s not just that you don’t trust the staff? If it’s checks and balances, why doesn’t it happen at the appropriate level on the project? Is it an alternative view, is it to make sure that something strategic isn’t missed? If so, be clear about that. Once the reason is clear, that filter can be passed over the things we’re looking to have approved, there will likely be a bunch of stuff that can get binned, and we’ve now saved time, and provided some agency and responsibility to some smart people for doing the right thing.