The decision rights work is done. The governance paper has been signed off. Team leads now hold clear authority to approve a defined category of cases without going anywhere near the senior table. The message went out weeks ago: decisions need to happen closer to the work. And yet the escalations keep coming. Service leads bring back decisions they were technically allowed to make. Case managers ask for a second opinion on matters that sit well within their remit. Files that

The paper has been circulated. The risk register has been updated. The programme team presents the position: delivery remains amber-red, stakeholder concerns are noted, a number of issues require resolution. The board thanks the team, notes the risks, and asks for a further update at the next meeting. Everyone in the room has been sighted on the issue. Nobody has actually decided what to do about it. The programme moves on, formally governed. This pattern is more common than

The paper has been revised. The data is better. The options are laid out more clearly than last time. Someone has worked hard to close the gaps the previous discussion identified. The item is back on the agenda, and this time, the team is going to get to a decision. The discussion is substantive. People engage. The risks are rehearsed. Partial agreement forms. The chair draws out something that sounds, in the room, like a conclusion. And then the meeting ends, and within days

The organisation chart arrives in inboxes. New titles, cleaner reporting lines, fewer layers. Someone has worked hard on the design. The logic is visible on the page: sharper accountabilities, clearer ownership, a better model for how decisions will flow. For a day or two, people study it carefully. Then the work resumes. And within weeks, something familiar returns. Decisions bounce between teams. Handoffs are tense. People ask who owns a piece of work that cuts across two o

The same agenda item. Third time this month. The group reviews the context, shares perspectives, notes the complexity — and time runs out. Someone suggests gathering more data. It rolls to the next fortnight. When this pattern repeats across multiple forums, the organisation begins to feel sluggish. Projects lose momentum, leaders complain about meeting overload, and the natural instinct is to fix how meetings are run. But the problem is rarely a facilitation one. When the sa