The Approval Trap

Approvals are supposed to reduce risk. In many organizations, they quietly create it. If your work keeps stalling in review loops—endless "quick looks," meeting rehashes, and threads that never fully resolve—you're not alone. Over time, sign-offs meant to protect quality turn into a system of delay, diluted ownership, and decision avoidance. The result isn't safer work. It's slower work, fuzzier accountability, and more late surprises. The Approval Trap: When Safety Becomes Theater is a practical, plainspoken guide for managers, team leads, and cross-functional teams in larger orgs who want to keep standards high without drowning in sign-offs. Casey Hale breaks down how approval chains form, what they're really signaling (risk, trust gaps, politics, uncertainty), and how to replace "gatekeepers" with clear guardrails—so decisions can move without drama. Inside, you'll learn how to: Spot the moment input becomes approval—and why that's where the process breaks Prevent "being careful" from turning into status theater and invisible queues Replace vague "alignment" with decision ownership (one name, one outcome) Use guardrails and checks instead of routing work through endless approvers Escalate without punishment, so risks surface early instead of being hidden Stop meetings from becoming approval laundering where nobody actually decides Handle high-risk work on purpose with explicit boundaries, checks, and clean closure Keep quality high with observable standards—not political sign-offs and preference edits This is not a productivity manifesto. It's a set of operational moves you can use in real work: short phrases, simple templates, and lightweight routines that reduce friction while keeping risk bounded. The goal isn't speed for its own sake. The goal is clarity: clear owners, clear decisions, clear escalation, and closed loops. If you're responsible for outcomes in product, projects, operations, marketing, engineering, policy, compliance-adjacent work, or any cross-functional environment where reviews multiply, this book gives you a better system than "add one more approver." Clarity beats theater. One owner. Clear guardrails. Close the loop.