I do not need ten approvals. I need two green lights
Accountability and decisions · 27 July 2026
A project to employ people with disabilities can collect ten favourable opinions and still fail to start. Legal sees no obstacle. HR is open. Procurement can launch a process. Finance agrees that the numbers add up. Everybody is in favour. That is precisely why nobody has to act: ten approvals can contain no decision at all.
Key points
- The first green light comes from a sponsor with authority to decide, commit a budget and launch the project.
- The second comes from the owner of real work: its process, tasks, quality, manager and operational result.
- HR, legal, procurement and tax validate the conditions. They can say no. Their yes, on its own, starts nothing.
What this means for a company
Before the next meeting, ask two questions. Who can decide that the company will launch the project? Who will identify the work, the manager and the quality measure the following day? If either question goes unanswered, another round of opinions will change nothing. The problem is the lack of authority to act, not a shortage of approvals. This simple qualification can save months: discussions without those two green lights are a substitute for the project, not a stage of it. I explore the reasons for this delay further in “PFRON as a test of organisational maturity”.
Originally published 27 July 2026.