A direct report floods a senior leader with data, trivial updates, and minor decisions, so a controversial activity passes through the queue looking routine and never gets the oversight it needs.
An example
Three months after joining a medical-device maker as chief of staff to the chief executive, he pulled the volume numbers for her inbox. One division head, who ran the infusion-pump line, had gone from about forty messages and approval requests a month to more than 130, with no change in remit. Most were small: a supplier name change, a trade-show budget, a conference-room booking that needed sign-off. In the stream, sent on a Friday with eleven other items, was a two-line note that the complaint rate on one pump model had been 'reclassified to align with updated coding guidance.' The chief executive had approved it from her phone. The reclassification moved the pump below the threshold that would have triggered a field-action review.
Why it works
When everything arrives at once, the risky item rides through looking routine, so letting it pass is the easy path. Deep review loses value because the executive cannot tell in advance which item deserves it, and it costs more, since every hour spent on trivia is an hour unavailable for the probing the controversial item needs. Weak gatekeeping helps it, as do an executive who takes pride in being hands-on and an activity that can be dressed as procedure. Volume that draws attention to itself undoes it.
The thinking behind it
Herbert A. Simon In Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World (1971), Herbert Simon argued that information consumes the attention of its recipients, so a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and most of its cost falls on the reader. An executive buried in trivial approvals has spent that attention before the risky item arrives. Simon's point also explains the defense: thresholds and triage protect the scarce resource, while exhorting people to read more does not.
Daniel Kahneman Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) by Daniel Kahneman describes how people under time pressure or overload rely on System 1, the fast and automatic mode, and accept the intuitive answer. An item worded as housekeeping and sent with eleven others invites exactly that reading: it looks routine, so it gets approved from a phone. Separate cadences for routine and strategic review force the deliberate mode back onto the items that need it.
Warning signs
One person's upward messages and decision requests jump with no change in what they are responsible for. Briefings and board packs swell with routine disclosures and new dashboards just before a contested topic comes up. Small decisions that used to be delegated start arriving for sign-off. The item that matters comes in a batch, late in the week, worded as housekeeping.
How to defend yourself
Treat a sudden rise in volume as a question. 'Why is this report three times longer?' is a fair thing to ask out loud.
- Set delegation thresholds so small decisions stay below you and stop competing for attention.
- Give a chief of staff a mandate to compress what comes up, which means cutting, beyond summarizing.
- Keep routine and strategic reviews on separate cadences, so a contested item cannot hide in the routine stream.
- Ask senders to flag, in one line, anything that changes risk, reporting, or a threshold.
On a board, ask management to name the three items in the pack that most deserve your time. Then read the rest for what was left off that list.
How a leader shuts it down
Any reviewer whose intake is controlled by the people being reviewed can be saturated, whatever their formal authority. Telling executives to pay closer attention does not help, because attention is what is being used up. Build independent triage, give internal audit investigative capacity of its own, and set a rule against approvals after a set hour.