Why do I need approval for decisions I am supposed to own?

Because your scope has expanded faster than your formal decision rights. Most organisations update decision-rights architecture only at major reorganisations — typically every 18 to 24 months. In between, leaders absorb expanded scope without a corresponding expansion in formal authority. AI deployment is now the most common accelerant.

What is the difference between scope and decision rights?

Scope describes what a leader is accountable for. Decision rights describe what that leader is authorised to decide unilaterally, what requires sign-off, and what escalates. The two are often confused — and usually drift apart inside scaling organisations. The drift is the Executive Authority Gap at the decision-rights layer.

How do I formally update my decision rights?

Decision-rights redesign is a structural exercise — not a conversation. It requires mapping the current state, redesigning the boundary in writing, and closing the perception loop with the leader's sponsor and operating environment. This is what Blumaverick calls Decision Boundary Design.

What Operating Above Your Title Actually Costs — and Who Pays for It

Jun 23

Written By Patricia Collins

Byline: Patricia Collins ran growth strategy across IBM's $30B Cloud portfolio and held the CMO seat at one of the first IoT startups. She now advises operators living the gap she's describing.

The organisation expands what you do without expanding what you are. That gap is not free. It is just billed to you instead of the company.

There is a version of operating above your title that feels like momentum. You are trusted with more. You are in the rooms that matter. The hard problems route to you because you are the one who solves them.

And there is the version no one names — where “operating above your title” is just the polite description of a structural arrangement the organisation has quietly settled into. You hold the accountability. Someone else holds the authority. The work compounds. The standing does not.

AI has made this more common, not less. As organisations flatten, the decisions that used to live in the layers below you route upward — to the most capable person in the function. That is you. No mandate update. No comp change. Just more scope arriving on a calendar that was already full. AI did not create the gap. It removed the time the organisation used to take to close it.

The arrangement, in plain terms

Most of the executives I speak with are running at least two roles’ worth of work. The pattern is consistent: a junior role below them stopped being backfilled, a peer role beside them was eliminated in a restructure, and the work from both now sits on their desk. The org calls it “doing more with less.” The earnings call calls it efficiency. Both descriptions are convenient. Neither names who is actually absorbing the cost.

The org expanded what you do. It did not expand what you are.

What it costs — the part that lands on you

This is not a feeling. It shows up in measurable ways, and the research is consistent:

Nearly 7 in 10 workers report taking on extra responsibilities hoping it converts to a promotion. 78% say they are carrying a larger workload without additional compensation. (JobSage.)
Middle managers report some of the highest sustained stress levels on record — a condition that has become permanent rather than seasonal. (Capterra.)
Roughly half of senior leadership transitions fail within two years — and when organisations diagnose why, the cause is rarely capability. It is context: mandate, decision rights, peer dynamics, the structural conditions around the role. (McKinsey; Institute of Executive Development.)

Read those together and the picture is clear. You are absorbing scope the structure was never redesigned to hold — and the cost of that gap is paid in your time, your advancement timeline, and eventually your decision to stay or leave.

What it costs — the part the organisation pays later

The gap is not free for the company either. It just defers the bill. When the most reliable executive is held at a title that no longer matches their scope, three things follow: the work becomes dependent on one person’s willingness to over-extend, the succession pipeline hollows out because no one is being formally built into the role they are already doing, and the eventual exit costs far more than the promotion would have. Organisations that flatten without redesigning authority are not saving margin. They are borrowing it from their own future — at interest.

Scope creep used to be a slow story. AI removed the catching-up window.

Why performing harder does not close it

The instinct is to earn your way out: deliver more, absorb more, prove readiness one more time. But the gap is not a performance problem, so performance does not close it. The role’s formal authority has to be redesigned to match its operational reality. That redesign is what closes the Executive Authority Gap™. It is the work of the Executive Authority Method™ — and it is structural, not developmental.

The distinction matters because it changes the question. Not “how do I develop further?” but “what structural conditions am I operating inside that no further development can fix?”

Three paths from here

Read the IP. The AI Authority Gap™ Executive Brief is the foundational essay on what this gap is, why it's structural, and how it closes.

Map your gap. Take the 60-second Authority Gap Checklist now for a fast read on where your scope has outrun your title — and you're first in for BluShift™, which maps the patterns in your seat and the levers to pull, when it opens end of June. blumaverick.io/blushift

Request a Private Preliminary Briefing. For executives whose authority gap has become a structural risk — the AI exposure is now material and the structural levers aren't yet in your hands — I offer a confidential 30-minute briefing before any discussion of engagement. Request it through the Authority Auditpage. I respond personally.