Unclear decision-making can quietly derail change. Learn how change governance helps organizations reduce adoption risk, clarify accountability, and make better decisions before issues become urgent.
There’s a moment in most change projects when the room goes quiet.
Someone asks, “Who’s making the call on this?”
Some people glance at the project manager, who then looks to the sponsor. The sponsor thought operations was in charge, but operations was waiting for guidance. Someone suggests 'taking it offline,' which seems helpful until the same decision comes back two weeks later, still without an owner.
Meanwhile, the risk doesn’t stay neatly contained. It spreads into timelines, messages, and team confidence.
The rollout date gets closer. Impacted teams get mixed messages. Leaders start filling in the blanks. Employees hear three different versions of the same change and begin making their own assumptions. A decision that should have taken one meeting slowly spreads confusion about the project.
This is where change governance matters.
We’re not talking about a 47-page document that sits in a shared drive and never gets opened after kickoff. We mean practical governance that answers simple but important questions before things get urgent. Questions like, who decides, needs to be consulted, or informed? What about people risks, where do they go and how fast do issues need to move? And what happens when a decision affects multiple teams?
When no one is clearly accountable, risk determines outcomes. The main takeaway: to manage risk, someone must own each decision.
The quiet cost of unclear decisions
Unclear decision-making usually doesn’t show up as one big, obvious problem. It shows up in small moments that seem reasonable at the time.
A team lead approves a workaround because their team can’t wait any longer. Another leader gives different direction because that’s what they heard in a meeting. The project team holds back a communication because they’re still waiting for sign-off. An impacted group starts to lose confidence because the answer seems to change depending on who they ask.
No one is trying to cause confusion. That’s why it can be so hard to spot. The issue isn’t effort, it’s ownership.
This is why clear roles and responsibilities matter. McKinsey & Company found that “change programs with governance structures clearly identifying roles and responsibilities are 6.4 times more likely to succeed.” 1
In change projects, ownership means more than just having a name next to a task. A real decision owner has the authority, context, and responsibility to make decisions or escalate them quickly. Without this, decisions drift, and that creates adoption risk.
At Levvel, we see adoption risk as the people-side risk that can affect whether a change actually sticks. The solution can be well-designed, the project plan can be beautifully colour-coded, and the launch can still struggle if people don’t understand what’s changing, why it matters, what they’re expected to do, or who they can trust for answers.
A decision that isn’t made never just sits there. It leads to confusion, delays, resistance, and extra work.
A simple example: the policy change that went sideways
Picture a company rolling out a new hybrid work policy.
At first, everything looks ready. The executive team has agreed on the direction, HR has written the policy, Communications has drafted the announcement, and leaders are preparing to talk with their teams.
Then the questions start. Can teams adjust office days based on operational needs? What happens with employees who were hired as remote-first? Do managers have flexibility, or is the policy consistent across the company? Who approves exceptions? How will this be measured?
Those questions are normal. In fact, they’re useful. They show where the change needs more clarity.
But if there’s no governance, answers start coming from all directions.
One leader tells their team, “We’ll make it work for our area.” Another tells their team the policy is firm. HR says exceptions need approval, but nobody is quite sure who gives that approval or what criteria they’re using.
So employees do what employees always do when the official path is unclear. They ask each other. They compare notes. They try to figure out what’s actually happening before it affects their schedule, their team, or their manager’s expectations.
That’s when people start to lose trust in the change.
People may not be resisting the policy. They may simply be reacting to the confusion around it. The decision path wasn’t clear enough to support the people expected to follow it.
Governance is how you stop the guessing
Change governance gives structure to the human side of decision-making.
It helps leaders and project teams define how decisions will be made, how risks will be escalated, and how people will stay aligned as the change moves forward. Levvel’s Change Governance Workshop focuses on establishing the structures, roles, processes, milestones, decision-making pathways, stakeholder engagement, risk and issue management, transparent communication, and project controls needed to support successful change.
Good governance helps answer questions like:
- Who needs to be in the room for decisions that affect adoption?
- What decisions can the project team make without escalation?
- What decisions require executive input?
- What risks need immediate attention?
- How do we know when a people concern has become a project issue?
- How do we prevent the same discussion from happening in five different meetings?
When next steps are clear, people don’t waste time figuring out who to ask. Leaders know when to get involved, teams know where to turn, and risks get handled before they grow.
When governances comes too late
A lot of organizations wait too long to clarify governance.
At first, everything seems fine because there’s still time in the schedule. People feel optimistic. The project team is busy planning, and leaders are generally supportive. Everyone agrees alignment matters, but that alone isn’t enough.
Then, the go-live gets closer.
Suddenly, the questions have sharper edges.
Employees are concerned. Leaders need talking points. Training timelines are tight. A high-risk group is pushing back. A process decision affects multiple departments. A sponsor wants a quick answer, but the people closest to the work weren’t consulted.
Now the team is trying to build governance while also managing urgency.
That’s when trying to figure things out on the fly starts to cost more.
Talking about governance early on might feel like extra work. But if you wait until go-live, the lack of governance can feel like panic every time a meeting invite appears.
Trust starts with knowing who's making the call
People don’t need every detail figured out on day one. Most understand that change comes with moving parts.
What they do need is confidence that someone is steering the decision, listening to concerns, and making sure questions don’t disappear into the void.
When a leader says, “I don’t have that answer yet, but I know where it’s going and when we’ll hear back,” that’s much better than offering a vague answer that changes two days later.
When a project team can say, “This risk affects four impacted groups, so it needs to go to the decision forum by Friday,” the risk has a path.
When stakeholders know their roles, they can stop hovering over every decision, just in case something gets missed.
Governance gives people confidence that the change has real support behind it.
What good change governance looks like in real life
Good governance is about making the right conversations happen with the right people at the right time.
It usually includes a few practical pieces:
- Clear decision rights, so people know who can approve, adjust, pause, or escalate.
- Defined roles and responsibilities, so ownership isn’t implied or assumed.
- Escalation paths for adoption risks, so issues don’t sit with people who can’t resolve them.
- Stakeholder coverage, so decisions aren’t made in a room that accidentally excludes the people most affected.
- A simple way to share updates, so people don’t have to chase the story through meetings, emails, and side chats.
- Project controls and metrics, so leaders can see whether the change is moving as intended.
The goal is to reduce the back-and-forth that slows people down and help teams move forward with more confidence.
Risk needs an owner too
One of the most useful shifts in change governance is treating people risks with the same seriousness as budget, schedule, or technical risks.
If people aren’t ready, they need support. If leaders are sending mixed messages, the message needs to be cleaned up. If teams are worried about how the change will affect their workload, training, safety, customers, or performance, those concerns need to be heard by someone who can actually address them.
Levvel’s Balanced Change approach uses risk identification, mitigation actions, and risk ownership to increase the likelihood of change adoption. The point is to identify key adoption risks, determine how to respond to them, and assign ownership so the risks are actively managed.
Assigning a risk owner makes the risk visible, trackable, and actionable. It gives someone the responsibility to monitor it, advance mitigation, and raise their hand when support is needed.
Without an owner, risk becomes everyone’s concern and nobody’s job.
We all know how that situation turns out.
The down-to earth test
You don’t need to overcomplicate change governance to know whether it’s working.
Ask a few simple questions:
- Is our governance structure clearly defined and understood?
- Are roles and responsibilities for change management documented?
- Do we have a process for escalating and resolving risks and issues?
- Are stakeholders identified, engaged, and aware of their roles?
- Is our communication strategy transparent and effective?
- Are project controls and metrics in place to monitor progress?
- Do we have assurance mechanisms to track against the project plan?
- Are decision-making pathways clear and efficient?
- Is our governance model tailored to our organization’s needs?
- Are we confident that our governance will support sustainable change?
If you answer 'sort of,' 'probably,' or 'it depends who you ask' to several of these questions, your change may have more risk than necessary.
Make the decision path visible before the risk gets loud
Change is hard enough when people know what’s happening. It gets much harder when they’re also trying to decode who owns what.
Strong change governance gives your organization a practical way to make decisions, manage people risks, and keep leaders on the same page as work moves forward. It brings clarity before confusion starts. It gives risks a place to go before they turn into problems. It helps leaders respond with confidence instead of searching for answers at the last minute.
When no one owns a decision, risk quickly takes over.
Ready to strengthen your change governance?
If your organization is preparing for a major transformation, seeing risks surface without a clear escalation path, or feeling unsure about who owns key decisions, the Change Governance Workshop Guide is a practical place to start.
Download the Change Governance Workshop Guide as a jumping-off point to clarify decision-making pathways, roles, responsibilities, risk escalation, stakeholder engagement, communication, and project controls for your next change initiative.
~ Reach out to Connect@levvel.ca
Sources
[1] McKinsey & Company. How do we manage the change journey?
