Unable to win approval for a fix, a manager routes a real, long-standing cost to the department with the power to fix it, inside their own authority, so that department pushes for the change.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Twice the credit manager at a specialty chemicals maker had asked for budget to replace the order-to-cash system, and twice the capital committee had said no, because nobody outside credit felt the problem. Orders from slow-paying customers sat in a hold queue only her team watched, and sales never saw what the holds cost. In February she changed the hold step, a configuration inside her own authority, so held orders appeared on the sales dashboard with each account executive's name and the days held. She sent the vice president of sales a note the same day explaining the change and offering a weekly review of the holds. By April he was asking the chief executive for a new order-to-cash system. He championed it at the capital committee with her cost model attached, and it passed.
Why it works
Making a real cost land on a powerful department turns an improvement nobody asked for into the answer to a problem that department now wants solved, so the change looks better overnight. The old way of working loses its standing as the invisible default, since someone who matters now sees it as broken, and continuing it becomes expensive for exactly the party with the standing to force a fix. It depends on authority to change the workflow, reporting line, or metric without provoking a counter-move, on a change that is a sound operational decision in its own right, and on a department with the political capital to push the fix through.
The thinking behind it
Ronald H. Coase Coase argues in The Problem of Social Cost (1960) that if bargaining were costless, the parties affected by a cost would negotiate to the efficient outcome however rights were assigned, so in practice it matters who bears the cost and how expensive it is to negotiate. A cost that falls on a team with no power to fix it persists. Routing it, openly and accurately, to the department that can fix it gives the party with power a reason to bargain for the change.
Jeffrey Pfeffer In Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations (1992), Pfeffer argues that getting things done requires diagnosing who has power and whose support is needed, then building and using power deliberately. A manager twice refused budget lacks the power to win the argument alone. Making the cost visible to a department that does have that power recruits it to the cause without a single lobbying meeting.
When it fits
This fits when a real inefficiency costs the company money, the cost sits where nobody with power feels it, and you control the workflow, report, or metric that decides where it shows up. The department that would feel it needs the standing to get the fix funded. You need a cost that is real and measured, and a fix you can show is worth its price.
How to use it well
Measure the cost first, in money and days, so the number that lands on the other department is one you can defend line by line.
- Make the change inside your own authority, choosing a version that is a sound decision on its merits, such as showing a cost where it is incurred.
- Tell the affected leader the day you make it, explain what they will now see and why, and offer help reading the numbers.
- Have the fix ready: a cost model, options, and your support for whoever champions it.
Then let the other department own the push. Your part was to make the cost visible and the answer easy to reach.
What it costs and where it backfires
Blame for the new pain may land on you, especially if the other department learns of the change from its own dashboard, and that resentment can outlast the fix. A change made only to provoke reads as a power play and invites a counter-move. If the routed cost is inflated, or the change is hidden from the people it lands on, the move has become deception, and if it harms customers or the other team's work to create pressure, it has become sabotage.
When it is used on you
Trace the change before you champion a fix when an old problem suddenly lands on your numbers: find the workflow, report, or metric change that moved it, when it happened, and who made it. Judge the fix on its merits, which may well be good, and ask for the change to be explained, and reversed if need be, while the decision is made.