Eleven institutions shared a governance model that had grown by addition rather than design. The engagement mapped decision rights end to end, removed duplicated approvals, and gave the council a smaller set of decisions it could genuinely own.

The situation

Each institution had added committees, delegations, and sign-offs as it grew, and none had removed any. The result was a system in which seven layers could approve a decision and none could make it. Vice-chancellors were accountable for outcomes they could not sequence, while the system council spent most of its agenda receiving reports.

The presenting complaint was speed. The underlying problem was ownership.

How the work ran

Fourteen months, in three passes. The first traced twenty real decisions from origin to conclusion and recorded every point at which someone could say no. The second reassigned those rights explicitly, institution by institution. The third rewrote the council’s agenda architecture so the smaller set of retained decisions actually reached it in a form it could act on. The approach draws on the decision-rights research.

What changed

Approval layers fell from seven to three, council time spent on strategy rose from 18% to 47%, and cross-institution decisions began resolving in weeks rather than across terms. The federated structure was left intact. Only the authority inside it was redrawn. For similar engagements, start a conversation.