When you look inside your organisation and the governance it’s applying do you see the right distribution of delegated authority. Over time it’s quite likely that authority to act becomes crystallised within the culture in a certain way with leaders. This can become further crystallised if there are prolonged crises (such as the recent pandemic or operational/financial performance issues).
It’s so important to take regular checks to see whether firstly, the prescribed delegated authorities and decision making are happening, or have leaders been pushing decisions upward for any number of reasons (which in themselves will be worthy of investigation). Secondly, the level and nature of the delegated authority and true empowerment reflects our culture of trust and control. Of course healthy checks and balances make sense. But lazy, fearful or controlling measures do not help an organisation (of any nature) to grow. Grow psychologically, culturally and, of course, in performance.
Executive teams, leadership teams, Boards and project groups – why not take a look at your decision making and authority and power to act. Are these working hard for you in enabling your organisation to focus its energies in the right places in service of the vision and purpose its holding?