Problem statement
In many organisations, decisions are approved cleanly and still fail predictably.
Not because the decision was wrong, but because no one is accountable for the outcome once approval is given.
Analysis
As organisations scale, decision-making fragments. Authority, responsibility, and consequence drift apart.
A proposal is written by one group, reviewed by another, approved by a third, and executed by a fourth. Each step is framed as progress. Each handover reduces ownership. By the time work begins, the decision exists without a clear owner.
Approval becomes the finish line. Execution becomes someone else’s problem.
This fragmentation is often justified as governance. In practice, it is risk distribution. Approval spreads responsibility thinly enough that no single person carries the outcome. If things go well, credit is shared. If they go badly, causality becomes unclear.
Decision forums grow. Stakeholder lists lengthen. Language shifts from commitment to alignment. The organisation becomes very good at agreeing and very bad at owning.
Over time, people learn what the system rewards. Producing a well-defended recommendation matters more than ensuring it works. Surviving review matters more than being accountable for impact. Decisions are shaped to pass gates, not to hold up under reality.
The organisation still appears decisive. Calendars are full. Artefacts are produced. Nothing feels stuck. But outcomes drift, because no one is structurally positioned to correct course once the decision leaves the room.
Failure mode
This persists because it feels safe.
For senior leaders, distributed decision-making reduces personal exposure. For middle layers, it offers protection through process. For teams, it creates distance from consequences they cannot control anyway.
Everyone can point to the moment approval was granted. Few can point to who owns the result.
Attempts to fix this usually fail because they target behaviour instead of structure. Calls for “stronger ownership” or “clearer accountability” are layered on top of systems that actively prevent either. Responsibility is declared, but authority is not adjusted. Consequence remains diffuse.
Over time, accountability becomes symbolic. Owners are named without control. Metrics are tracked without mandate. Reviews happen without correction.
The organisation does not lack intelligence. It lacks a decision model that binds authority to outcome.
Implication
When decisions survive approval but fail in reality, several things break downstream.
Execution teams lose confidence that outcomes matter more than optics. Strategy becomes something that happens upstream, disconnected from lived constraints. Performance discussions drift toward explanation instead of correction.
Most critically, the organisation loses its ability to learn. Without a clear owner, failure cannot be examined honestly. Without consequence, success cannot be attributed meaningfully. Feedback loops weaken until they are performative.
At that point, the system does not fail loudly. It decays quietly.
More process is added. More visibility is created. More reporting appears. None of it restores accountability, because accountability was designed out earlier, when approval replaced ownership.
The organisation keeps making decisions. It just stops making progress.