The gap between a workstream and an operating decision

Consider an illustrative market launch in which the vehicle, the website and dealer training are ready. A customer asks for a financing offer on a particular specification. The local team can quote a vehicle price, but the finance subsidy needs central approval, the available stock does not match the advertised delivery promise and changing the specification affects the residual-value assumption. Nobody owns the whole decision within the time the customer is willing to wait.

No single workstream has necessarily failed. The failure lies in the relationship between them: their completion criteria describe outputs, while the customer needs a decision that uses several outputs together. Calling this a coordination issue can understate it, because a coordinator can organise the conversation without having the authority to settle the commercial trade-off.

The same problem appears after delivery. A technical case may require a warranty decision, a replacement part, temporary mobility and communication with the customer. Each element can have an owner, but if each owner protects a separate budget and waits for another to act first, ownership exists on paper while the customer is left without a solution.

Find the decisions before changing the chart

The first step should be to identify the decisions that repeatedly cross organisational boundaries. Start from real transactions, exceptions and delays, and establish what had to be decided, what information was available, who could authorise action and what prevented the case from being closed.

This gives a more useful starting point than a general workshop on collaboration. A recurring delay might arise because the approval limit is too low, the necessary information arrives late, the commercial rule is unclear or two functions are accountable for outcomes that conflict. Each of these causes needs a different change.

Choose a small number of decisions that matter economically, such as accepting a fleet order, changing the approved local price range, allocating constrained stock or authorising a customer remedy. For each one, describe the trigger, the permitted choices, the decision owner, the evidence required and the escalation route. Keep the description simple enough that the operating team can actually use it.

An owner needs a defined boundary

Each recurring decision needs someone accountable for its outcome, but naming that person is not enough. The mandate must state what they can change, what budget or resources they can use and which constraints cannot be negotiated. Safety, legal duties and financial controls still apply when a programme needs speed.

The owner should be able to decide within agreed limits. Decisions beyond those limits need a named senior decision-maker and a response time that reflects the cost or risk of waiting. If the answer needs a committee, specify what the committee must decide and who resolves any disagreement. A recurring meeting without a decision rule can turn a temporary exception into the normal way of operating.

Where a decision crosses company boundaries, as a finance offer may do between an OEM, an importer, a finance provider and a dealer, an internal appointment cannot grant authority to the other parties. The commercial terms, approval limits and service agreements must establish who can decide and who carries the resulting cost.

This is also where the sponsor's role becomes concrete. The sponsor does not need to make every operational choice but must settle the conflicts that the current structure cannot resolve, including changes to responsibilities, budgets and measures. Without that support, the new owner may inherit the accountability while the existing functions keep all the practical power.

The mandate must include the economics

A transformation can move work between participants without moving the resources or revenue needed to do it. An OEM may take pricing authority while an importer keeps local exception handling and a dealer continues to support the customer. Each change may look reasonable in the target design, but the economics still have to work for every participant expected to deliver it.

Map the work that changes and how it is funded. Identify which costs disappear, which move and which are newly created, and record the assumptions behind the expected benefit. A digital process may reduce manual data entry while increasing technical support. A central commercial rule may improve consistency while creating a queue of exceptions. When these results follow directly from the design, they should not be treated as implementation surprises.

The sponsor, or a benefits owner appointed by the sponsor, should assess the combined financial effect before counting the savings. A saving in one workstream is not a gain for the overall model if it becomes an unbudgeted cost somewhere else. Where work moves between companies, the parties also need to agree how the costs and obligations will be funded. Some new capability may still be worth paying for, but the business case should show the cost and who has accepted it.

Avoid creating a permanent transformation bureaucracy

Fragmented ownership does not always call for another central function. A transformation office can help identify dependencies and enforce decisions, but it can also become one more layer that normal operations have to pass through. The design should make the permanent business more capable rather than more dependent on continuous project escalation.

Some decisions belong at the centre because they create shared risk or need scarce expertise. Others should be delegated because local information changes quickly. Where the boundary sits depends on the decision; a global safety standard and a local customer remedy do not need the same approval structure.

Review the arrangement once it has been used. Frequent escalation may mean that the agreed limits are wrong, the information is missing or the owner lacks confidence. A decision thought to be local may also create a wider exposure. Escalation can reflect a shortage of senior decision-making capacity as well, as discussed in our earlier article “The Execution Vacuum” [S2]. That is different from a case in which the people involved are available but no one has the agreed authority to decide. Adjust the design using evidence from real cases instead of treating the first responsibility matrix as permanent.

This diagnosis has limits. Assigning an owner cannot repair a weak product, inadequate funding or a missing technical capability. Clear authority helps to expose those constraints and choose a response, but it does not remove them.

What the executive team should require

For a material transformation, ask for a small set of decisions whose ownership will change, together with the customer or economic outcome each one is meant to improve. Require a named owner with authority that can actually be used, the information needed to act and a tested route for exceptions. Connect the expected benefit to the costs and obligations it creates elsewhere.

Then ask how the permanent organisation will keep making those decisions after the programme ends. Before the programme closes, each recurring decision needs a permanent home with the authority, budget and information required to act. If routine cases still depend on the transformation office or temporary programme leadership, that responsibility has not been transferred. At that point the transformation mandate becomes an operating design: the sponsor can see what must be settled, the functions can see their actual responsibilities and the business can test whether the arrangement works.

We would test a transformation design by following the operating decisions, identifying the authority and funding behind them, and checking whether the permanent organisation can use both. The programme already has plenty of people responsible for delivering their part. For the decisions that matter most, someone needs the authority to decide across those parts and remain accountable for the result.