Decision rights are an operating model, not an org chart

When a growing business feels slow, the instinct is to restructure. New reporting lines are drawn, new titles are announced, and six months later the same decisions are still waiting in the same inboxes.

The organisation chart describes who reports to whom. It says very little about who is allowed to commit money, change a price, hire a person or launch a product. Those are the questions that determine pace.

Start with forty decisions

In most businesses, a few dozen recurring decisions account for most of the friction. List them. For each, write down who actually decides today, who should decide, who must be consulted and who simply needs to know.

If everyone must be consulted, nobody has decided.

The exercise is uncomfortable because it makes implicit power explicit. That is exactly why it works. Once the map exists, people can argue about it, adjust it and, finally, use it.

Then change the structure — if you still need to

Often, a clear decision-rights map removes the need for a restructure altogether. When it does not, it gives the new structure something to be designed around: the work and the decisions, rather than the people currently in post.