Design a decentralized approval process to eliminate bottlenecks.

When you complain that everything has to wait for approval, the right question is not "how to approve faster" but "why do these things need approval in the first place?" The bottleneck does not come from slow approvers; it comes from a flawed approval architecture: too many tasks converge at one point, with unclear boundaries between what the team can handle and what needs to be escalated.

Layering by risk, not by asset type.

A common mistake is delegating by category, for example, "the social media team handles it themselves, while print must be approved." The correct classification should be based on the brand risk of each specific task.

• Low risk: Using the correct available templates, standard content, not touching core identity or positioning. The team handles it independently, no approval needed.
• Medium risk: Slight adjustments to templates, new content but within the defined framework. The team leader or brand manager approves internally.
• High risk: New assets outside of templates, major campaigns, positioning conflicts, or legal elements. It is mandatory to escalate to the center, meaning the person accountable for the brand must take responsibility.

The boundary between these three layers must be documented specifically. If it only exists in the manager's words, newcomers will not know the way forward and will default to asking everything.

RACI matrix: a tool for clear role separation

RACI is a role assignment matrix consisting of four groups. For each type of task, you identify:

• Responsible (the executor): who creates that product.
• Accountable (the person ultimately responsible): who has the authority to finalize and bear the results. The golden rule: each task should have exactly one Accountable person. More than one means no one is truly responsible.
• Consulted: who needs to be consulted before finalizing. This list must be short; too many names here create a new bottleneck.
• Informed (those who just need to know): who receives the notification of the results. This list also needs to be concise; too many names create information noise.

Each task has one accountable person. This is not to concentrate power, but to always know who has the authority to finalize decisions and avoid bottlenecks.

Asana, RACI Charts guide

The template library is the main bottleneck remover.

Most daily tasks within a team can be pre-approved as templates. When templates exist and the team uses them correctly, no further approvals are needed. This is how to reduce hundreds of small approvals in a year to none.

This means that investing in a good template library is not just about design; it is an operational decision. The more comprehensive the templates, the more autonomous the team becomes, and the reviewers are freed up to focus on the decisions that truly require their input.

Common mistakes when designing the approval rights

• Concentrating everything on one person: usually the founder or marketing director. When that person is absent or busy, the entire process comes to a halt.
• Many people are Accountable: It sounds safer, but in reality, no one truly finalizes. Tasks get stalled because everyone thinks someone else will decide.
• Do not set response deadlines: the approval process drags on indefinitely because no one is pressured to respond. Each approval layer needs a specific timeframe, for example: internal approval within one working day, central approval within three working days.
• The law only exists in words: the old ones know implicitly, the new ones do not know the way, default to asking everything and recreating the bottleneck.
• No escalation path: When two parties disagree or urgency arises, no one knows who has the authority to finalize, leaving the matter unresolved.

The viewpoint of Sinh Vũ

Sinh Vũ writes approval delegation rules as a hard part of the Brand Management Handbook: each type of asset is linked to a level of approval and exactly one person is responsible for the final decision. This is not for control, but so that everyone in the team knows what they are allowed to do without needing to ask.

At a higher operational level, review prompts and routing steps are integrated into automation workflows within project management tools, ensuring the right people are involved without relying on anyone's memory. A stage gate, which is a mandatory handoff point requiring confirmation before moving to the next step, completely replaces the arbitrary and opaque review process.

The result is not tighter control. The result is a more autonomous team because they understand the boundaries, and approvers are freed to work at their level.