The Decision Rights Scan
Eight questions on one stalled initiative. Find out how many of its real decisions actually have an owner.
Most stalled initiatives are not tracking problems. They are decision problems: nobody can say who has the actual authority to approve a scope change, move budget, or call the whole thing off. This scan checks eight of the decisions that matter most and tells you how many are ghost-owned.
The eight decisions this scan checks
- Scope changes
- Budget or resource moves
- Timeline shifts
- Vendor or tool choice
- Status reporting
- Cross-team tie-break
- Kill or pivot
- Sponsor accountability
Result bands
- Decision Rights: Intact: Most of the decisions that matter have a real owner. If this initiative is struggling, the cause is probably not structural.
- Decision Rights: Fraying: Some of the decisions that matter are ghost-owned. Work surfaces but stalls under pressure, especially on the calls that were technically someone's job.
- Decision Rights: Ghost-Owned: Most of the decisions that matter have no real owner. This is a structural problem. No amount of better tracking or better standups fixes it.