Following up on our post about ‘How To Find the Right Balance for Bureaucracy‘, the issue of decision approval in organizations is always a critical one. The issue of Levels of Authority granted to individuals always revolves around pre- or post- control. What is important is that the smaller decisions are not impeded by delays and are in fact controlled post-decision; but that for important decisions, sufficient debate occurs prior to the decision.
In fast growing organizations, levels of authority are always too low. It is often the same in organizations that are not used to running large projects when it comes to the level of authority of the project manager. Levels of Authority often need to be increased to minimise delays, and improve reactivity. However, for major decisions that can have a substantial impact on the organization’s performance, it remain legitimate to ensure that a proper debate occurs. And sometimes those decisions may look small but will have a high leverage on performance.
The way approvals happen in most companies however is that despite a proper system of levels of authority, debate do not happen prior to the decision. Decisions are limited to clicking on an approval button and often there is no context to the decision. The issue may also lie in improper levels of authority, and the important decision may be hidden in the midst of many less important ones.
Levels of authority should not only specify authority levels: they should also specify those decisions that require debate, and how this debate should be conducted.
