decision rights for decision throughput

One of the more painful features of bureaucracy is dreadfully slow approval. It takes forever to get the green light to do stuff. Probably you need multiple approvals - it’s not enough for your boss to say yes. They have to get the yes of a committee and some combination of their bosses. This all takes time. All those committees and bosses’ bosses have other priorities. Your thing is important to you - who knows if it’s important to them?

The layered approval might not even be the worst version of this problem. Your org might not require that many layers of approval; maybe you’re pretty decentralized and most people in fact have the power to decide all by their lonesome. This situation can feel and actually be pretty bureaucratic, still, if these decision rights aren’t clear. You can find yourself in a tragedy of the epistemic commons - thoughtful takes and input seep in from more and more people until the commons are flooded. And there’s still no decision. You can ask yourself - how are we so smart and so dang slow at the same time?

Wherever your org sits on the Grand Spectrum of Bureaucracy, a good use of leader energy is scouting for and naming all the places where decision rights aren’t clear. It’s probably better, net net, to have named The Wrong Decider than to have no named decider at all. 

-Eric