A project may need several kinds of permission before it can proceed. A sponsor approves the purpose, Finance authorises expenditure, a technical team supplies a dependency, and a service owner accepts the operating responsibility. None necessarily holds unrestricted control over the whole decision.
This makes power more difficult to understand than a hierarchy chart or a memorable quotation suggests. A person can influence the options without signing the approval. An expert can shape what others consider feasible while lacking authority to allocate resources. A formal decision-maker can depend on information and commitments they do not control directly.
Sayings about power can prompt useful questions about those relationships. They become less useful when they turn every disagreement into evidence of manipulation or assume that a title explains the entire outcome. Follow a decision through its options, information, authority, and consequences to see what influence actually operated.
‘Knowledge Is Power’ Leaves the Relationship Open
Expertise can matter because other people need a judgement they cannot readily provide themselves. A technical specialist may identify an integration risk that changes which options the organisation considers. Their influence depends partly on whether the knowledge is relevant, understandable, and trusted.
Consider a company choosing a shared reporting platform. The analyst who knows the source data may recognise that a proposed migration omits historical adjustments. That knowledge can materially affect the decision even if the analyst does not own the budget.
The specialist still needs a route to present the finding. Information can remain ineffective if it arrives too late, uses terms the decision-maker cannot interpret, or never reaches the forum where scope is approved. Having expertise and being able to apply it are related but different conditions.
French and Raven’s work on the bases of social power distinguishes expertise from other sources of influence, including legitimate authority and the capacity to reward or impose consequences. The distinction helps avoid treating every influential person as powerful in the same way.
For the reporting decision, clarify what the analyst can establish and what remains a choice. Evidence that a migration is incomplete does not automatically select the replacement design or approve additional cost. It informs decisions that other roles may need to make.
Formal Authority Defines a Remit, Not Unlimited Control
A title can establish who is authorised to approve a commitment. The remit should specify which commitment and under what conditions. A programme sponsor may approve scope while a budget owner controls expenditure and a data owner controls access.
Those boundaries are not necessarily dysfunction. They can distribute expertise and provide appropriate scrutiny. The problem appears when participants assume different decision rules or when no one can reconcile conflicting commitments.
For the reporting platform, the sponsor might want a single launch while divisions can only supply staff at different times. The sponsor needs an agreed route to resolve that allocation. Announcing the priority does not itself make the people available.
A decision map should distinguish advice, approval, dependency, and implementation. Treating everyone as a general veto holder can delay the work. Treating consultation as permission to override responsibilities outside the sponsor’s remit can create a different failure.
Atlassian’s DACI framework offers one way to make decision roles explicit. It still needs to reflect the organisation’s actual arrangements. The label of approver does not confer authority over a separate function’s obligation or resources.
The useful test is whether the participants know who can settle the outstanding choice and what happens after the answer. Authority becomes more workable when those consequences are clear to the teams expected to act.
The Options Can Be Shaped Before Approval
Influence also operates through how a question is framed. The person preparing an investment paper may decide which alternatives are compared, which costs are included, and which uncertainties receive attention. That work can improve a decision or narrow it prematurely.
For the reporting platform, a paper comparing two products might exclude improving the current service or reducing the requirement. The omitted options may be unsuitable, but the reason should be available. Otherwise the final approval can appear broad while the consequential choice has already been made.
Ask who defined the problem and what evidence supports that definition. A need for faster reporting is different from a requirement for a particular platform. Starting with the product can leave the organisation assessing implementation details before establishing whether the approach addresses the need.
Agenda control should also be examined through timing. A proposal presented after a customer promise has been made leaves fewer realistic alternatives than one considered beforehand. The decision-maker should understand which commitments already exist and whether they were authorised.
Preliminary conversations can be useful. They may expose missing requirements or improve an option before formal review. The material findings and any decisions made should reach the shared account rather than remain available only to people included in those conversations.
This is not a demand that every early idea receive a committee hearing. It is a requirement for enough transparency to understand how the proposal became the choice now being approved.
Dependence Can Create Influence Without Misconduct
A team controlling a scarce resource may have substantial influence over sequencing. A specialist with essential knowledge can affect what proceeds. A supplier can constrain a migration through formats, support, or integration arrangements.
These dependencies need examination without assuming deliberate obstruction. The specialist may genuinely be at capacity. The supplier may have a technical limitation rather than an intention to prevent exit. The organisation should assess the condition and feasible responses.
For the reporting project, several teams may need the same data engineer. Each local plan can appear reasonable while the combined commitment is impossible. The issue requires an allocation by people authorised to change the competing work.
A manager can also reduce avoidable concentration of knowledge through documentation, pairing, and supported development. That should not be framed as removing a person’s value. The purpose is to make the service maintainable and allow expertise to be used without creating a permanent single point of dependence.
The same reasoning applies to external providers. Maintaining an alternative may cost money and effort, while accepting a dependency can provide valuable capability. The decision should state which exposure is accepted and what evidence would justify changing it.
Influence becomes easier to assess when those conditions are visible. The organisation can distinguish a legitimate constraint from an unsupported claim and direct the response towards capacity, capability, or a revised commitment.
‘Power Corrupts’ Is a Prompt to Examine Constraints
A familiar warning about concentrated power can direct attention to oversight and challenge. It should not be treated as a diagnosis of every leader’s character. The question is what prevents an authorised person from making an unexamined or self-serving decision and what happens if an error occurs.
For the reporting platform, useful arrangements might include review of material assumptions, clear approval limits, and an accessible record of the final choice. People affected by the decision need a route to identify consequences the approver missed.
Oversight also has a cost and should serve a purpose. Requiring several approvals for every routine adjustment can slow action without improving scrutiny. The design should reflect the consequence, reversibility, and information needed for the choice.
Accountability should include the approver’s reasoning and the conditions accepted, not merely whether the delivery team met the eventual date. A sound review distinguishes an uncertain decision that proved wrong from one made without relevant evidence or outside the person’s authority.
Selective accountability becomes harder to sustain when the connected decisions remain visible. Differences in responsibility can then be explained through authority, information, and action rather than seniority alone.
Make the Consequence Visible After the Decision
An approval should change something people can identify. The reporting project may receive funding, a narrower scope, a revised sequence, or a condition requiring further evidence. The result needs to reach the plans and responsibilities affected.
Informal influence can change without an organisation-chart update. A new specialist, a departing sponsor, or a different supplier relationship may alter which information and commitments a decision depends on. The formal approval route can remain unchanged while its practical operation becomes less reliable.
Review these changes where they affect consequential work. If a trusted adviser leaves, identify who can provide the necessary assessment rather than assume the signature process still supplies the same scrutiny. If a new coordinator becomes the route for every exception, establish whether that role has the remit and capacity it now needs. The aim is to make the arrangement understandable and maintainable, not to eliminate the relationships through which people work. A decision process can use those relationships while keeping the authority, evidence, and responsibility clear enough for others to examine.
Check who bears the work. A decision that appears attractive centrally may create substantial preparation for a division or ongoing support for another team. Those effects do not automatically invalidate the choice, but they belong in its assessment and resource allocation.
Keep a route for revision. New evidence may reveal that a dependency is unavailable or the customer benefit differs from the forecast. Reporting that finding should lead to an examined decision rather than be treated as disloyalty to the original approval.
Power is most usefully understood through these practical relationships. Who can define the question, provide essential information, commit a resource, approve a choice, or obtain a correction? A quotation can draw attention to one part. A real decision shows how the parts interact and where the organisation needs clearer authority or stronger scrutiny.
