Why Approving Is Not Deciding
FEATURED PAPER
By Luca Paolo Giuseppe Prinzio
Turin, Italy
Abstract
Many projects operate within a formally impeccable governance framework: scheduled committees, complete minutes, approved milestones, signed responsibility matrices, named sponsors. And yet, when the project needs a timely, high-quality decision, that decision does not arrive, arrives too late, or is taken elsewhere and merely ratified. This article argues that the problem does not lie in the absence of governance, but in its orientation: governance designed to control is not necessarily able to enable decisions.
The article distinguishes between control-oriented governance — aimed at verifying the conformity of documents, roles and approvals — and enabling governance — aimed at producing timely decisions, each with an owner, and at removing the obstacles that block them. It deliberately shifts the unit of analysis away from the competencies of the Project Manager and towards the governance system itself, which is where the redesign has to happen. The central argument is that even the most capable Project Manager, able to diagnose organisational misalignment with precision, remains powerless if the decision-making structure is conceived solely to control. This is the referee without a whistle: they see the infringement, but have no instrument with which to stop the game.
Through four concrete shifts — from the nominal sponsor to the active sponsor, from milestones to readiness conditions, from escalation-as-blame to escalation as a designed channel, from minutes to the decision log — the article shows how to redesign governance so that diagnosis translates into decision. It proposes metrics of decision performance, it analyses the ambivalent role of artificial intelligence, and it discusses the reasons why organisations tend to remain in control mode.
Keywords: project governance, enabling governance, decision log, readiness conditions, sponsorship, escalation, manage by exception, decision latency, psychological safety, artificial intelligence, Public Administration.
- Introduction: The Paradox of Governance Without Decision
Let us imagine a scene that mirrors the one opening many projects in crisis. The steering committee meets punctually every month. The dashboard is up to date and predominantly green. The minutes are complete. The quarter’s milestones are approved. All the relevant stakeholders are present, in the room or connected remotely. To the ritual question — “are we aligned?” — the customary assent follows. On paper, the governance works.
Six months later, the project needs a decision that truly matters: reallocating capacity between two workstreams that have come into tension, accepting or rejecting a delay on a critical dependency, arbitrating between two functions that lay claim to the same specialist resource. The decision, however, does not emerge from the committee. It is sketched out in a corridor, postponed “for further analysis”, picked up again in a chat, and finally ratified in a later set of minutes — by which time the useful window has already closed. The committee had met every month. It had controlled everything. It had decided nothing at the moment when the decision was needed…
More…
To read entire paper, click here
How to cite this article: Prinzio, L. P. G. (2026). Control-Oriented or Enabling Governance: Why Approving Is Not Deciding, advisory article, PM World Journal, Vol. XV, Issue IX, September. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/pmwj168-Sep2026-Prinzio-Control-Oriented-or-Enabling-Governance.pdf
About the Author
Luca Paolo Giuseppe Prinzio
Turin, Italy
Luca Paolo Giuseppe Prinzio is a certified Project Manager and Database Administrator at CSI Piemonte in Turin, Italy, where he participates in complex projects on cloud and security. For over twenty years he has worked in the ICT world and carries out teaching and consulting activities in the field of Project Management. He can be contacted at lprinzio@gmail.com and linkedin.com/in/lprinzio
