Your Approval Process Is Probably Just a Queue

Approvals often add waiting without adding meaningful control.

It is easy for this sort of thing to become normal. People work around it, new starters copy the workaround and before long nobody really questions why the process works that way.

Look at what is actually happening

Take ten recent requests and compare active work with time spent awaiting approval. Ask what risk each approval genuinely controls.

The useful question is not whether somebody can work harder or remember more. It is whether the process is making the work unnecessarily difficult.

Design the better version

Use sensible thresholds, remove ceremonial sign-offs and automate low-risk routing where appropriate. Good governance should stop bad things happening, not stop everything happening.

That is the point of RE:PROCESS: make the work visible, challenge the bits that no longer make sense and build a simpler way of getting the outcome you actually need.