Do not remove checks. Make routine requests easier to route, then ask whether the CEO’s judgement is genuinely required or the requester lacks a clear route, owner or minimum information.
Illustrative business scenario—not a reported client result.
A chief executive has a growing queue of requests for approval: a routine supplier change, a travel exception, a hiring question and project variations. Colleagues copy the CEO rather than risk a wrong call. The response is a longer approval list. It can return incomplete requests to the start of the queue and make the CEO the collection point for uncertainty.
A delay can be a route problem, not a speed problem
An approval queue is often treated as a problem of executive responsiveness. Sometimes it is. More often, the queue contains several different problems: a request with insufficient information, a decision that belongs with another existing role, a matter that needs a genuine exception, or a control owner who needs to clarify the route.
HSE identifies role and control as work-design areas. Role concerns whether people understand their responsibilities and whether the organisation avoids conflicting roles. Control concerns how much say a person has in the way they do their work. 1 2 Those principles do not tell an organisation what its controls should be. They do support asking whether routine work reaches a senior leader because the role boundary is unclear.
Why a longer approval list can make the bottleneck worse
A longer list can create the appearance of control while leaving the central uncertainty untouched. The requester still does not know what makes an item ready, the executive still has to infer missing context, and routine work still waits for a person whose attention should be reserved for decisions that require it.
The response is not to encourage people to bypass the control framework. It is to make the existing route legible. If a process needs more scrutiny, it should continue to receive it. If a request is routine but repeatedly arrives at CEO level, that is a prompt to check the ownership and information route with the people responsible for it.
For the wider pattern of decision load and executive capacity, see Executive Coaching for Decision Making. This article stays narrower: the management of a repeat approval queue, not the design of corporate governance or risk controls.
Run a bounded queue review
Choose one recurrent category of routine requests and review a small recent sample with the relevant process, finance, risk or operational owner. The aim is to describe the current route accurately, not to redesign policy in a calendar slot.
Ask four questions:
- What decision is actually being sought? Name the decision rather than labelling every request “approval”.
- Who is already authorised to make it? Check the organisation’s existing policy, delegated authority and control arrangements. Do not create informal substitutions.
- What information makes the request ready? Agree the minimum factual context, options and decision required so the next owner does not have to reconstruct the case.
- What makes this an exception? Define the point at which a routine request becomes a matter for a more senior or specialist route.
The output might be a clearer request template, an existing owner or a route for incomplete items to be returned. It may reveal a process that needs formal attention. The review is not governance or legal advice, nor a substitute for control owners.
Keep necessary controls in view
Speed is not the sole measure of a good approval process. A route may be slow because a check is necessary, evidence is missing or a decision has wider consequences. The distinction is between justified wait and avoidable waiting from unclear ownership or repeated missing information.
That distinction matters for executive capacity. When a CEO is asked to solve every routine ambiguity, the role can become an informal operating manual for the rest of the organisation. The work then expands around the executive’s availability rather than around clear responsibilities.
HSE’s standard on role says organisations should provide information that enables people to understand their responsibilities and should have systems that let people raise concerns about uncertainty or conflict. 1 A queue review can surface those concerns. It cannot, by itself, supply authority, staffing, systems or accountability that the organisation has not provided.
Measure flow without monitoring people
Use a short, team-level period to observe the route: the number of routine requests returned because key information was absent; the number waiting beyond the organisation’s own expected period; the number escalated as exceptions; and the number that did not require CEO input after the route was clarified.
These are process measures, not performance targets for individuals. They may show whether the change has reduced repeat clarification. They do not establish a financial saving, a profit impact or a general improvement in organisational controls. If delays persist because capacity or authority is lacking, that is information for the appropriate organisational conversation.
The CEO can surface the pattern; the organisation owns the control design
A CEO can stop becoming the automatic answer by asking for a named decision, current owner and essential information. That is a leadership practice, not a transfer of responsibility for the organisation’s control environment. Formal authority, risk appetite, approvals and assurance remain matters for the appropriate employer, board or control functions.
HSE states that employers have a legal duty to assess work-related stress risks and act on them. 3 Where an approval queue reveals incompatible demands, unclear roles or insufficient resources, the response must include those organisational conditions. The individual leader cannot make a structurally overloaded route safe simply by working faster.
For structured educational support in reviewing priorities, time blocks and boundaries under pressure, preview the programme. It is not governance, legal, medical, mental-health, therapeutic, diagnostic or emergency support, and it does not replace an employer’s responsibility for work conditions.