A sponsor overstates a favored initiative's results by curating data, claiming gains that would have happened anyway, and restating pilot numbers as run rate, drawing money away from other projects.
An example
At a national home-goods retailer, the head of store operations had spent a year on a scheduling tool that cut overtime in forty stores. At the portfolio review it shared a slot with the digital team's personalization engine, whose sponsor reported $31 million in incremental revenue. That figure combined a holiday lift that hit every channel, a pilot in eight high-traffic stores multiplied across the chain, and customer anecdotes framed as transformation. Beside it, the scheduling tool's verified $4 million looked ordinary, and its expansion budget was halved. The store operations head asked finance to reconcile both claims to revenue booked in systems finance owned. The personalization number came back at $9 million, still a good result, and the next cycle used one impact template for every project in the portfolio.
Why it works
Curation, generous attribution, and well-timed reporting make the favored project look better, usually without anyone inventing a number. Inflated results also make backing it look easier, since approvers can tell themselves the bet is already proven. Sibling projects look worse by comparison without ever being attacked. It works when the sponsor controls how its own impact is measured, the approver has no independent way to check claims at decision speed, and the budget pool is zero sum, so whatever one project captures the others lose.
The thinking behind it
George A. Akerlof Akerlof's The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism (1970) shows that when buyers cannot tell quality, they pay only for average quality and the best sellers withdraw. A committee that cannot verify impact claims discounts all of them, honest ones included, so an aggressive curator loses little while a sponsor with verified, modest numbers looks ordinary. A standard template reconciled to finance systems restores the ability to tell them apart.
A. Michael Spence Spence's Job Market Signaling (1973) shows that a costly action can separate types when it is cheaper for the better type to take. Offering to have your numbers reconciled first to systems finance owns is such a signal: cheap for a sponsor whose results are real, expensive for one whose results are curated. That is why the offer persuades where competing claims do not.
Daniel Kahneman Tversky and Kahneman's Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (1974) describes anchoring: estimates adjust from a starting value, and the adjustment is usually too small. A $31 million figure put on the table first becomes the anchor against which other projects' verified results are read, so a solid $4 million looks small. Reconciliation replaces the anchor with a number both sides accept.
Warning signs
Sponsor-reported impact numbers never reconcile to revenue or cost systems that finance owns. Pilot results reappear a quarter later as run-rate figures for the whole organization. Gains that showed up in every channel are claimed by one project. Anecdotes stand in for measurement. Projects with verified results start to look modest, and their budgets shrink while the inflated one gets more executive time.
How to defend yourself
Ask three questions of every claim: who owns the metric, who reports it, and who validates it. Then ask for the number as it appears in a system finance owns. Treat it as a measurement gap that applies to everyone, and avoid accusing the other sponsor, who has probably curated far more than invented. The fix you propose then helps the whole portfolio, and is harder to refuse.
- Put your own results on the same basis and offer to have them checked first.
- Ask how much of the claimed gain appeared in comparable stores, teams, or periods without the initiative.
- Ask for access to the approver on equal terms, so both cases are heard in one room.
How a leader shuts it down
Embed finance with authority over how impact is measured, require one standard impact template across the portfolio, and separate the people who report results from the people who validate them. Give rival sponsors equal access to the approver, so inflated claims can be challenged at decision speed.