General counsels and procurement heads who doubt a rival's initiative apply every review the policy requires to its contracts, so it carries its full risk and cost before signature.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Having argued at the executive committee against the smart-home line and lost, the general counsel of a consumer electronics company declined the line head's request for an expedited review when its three contracts reached her team: a contract manufacturer, a cloud provider, and a packaging supplier. Each contract went through everything the policy required: conflict-of-interest review, insurance certificates, a data privacy assessment for the cloud provider, a sole-source justification for the manufacturer. She published the requirements on day one, answered every submission within the policy's five-day turnaround, and told the line head in writing that an expedited path existed through the chief financial officer. The contracts took fifty days against a department median of nineteen, and the privacy assessment found a data-residency problem the cloud contract then fixed.
Why it works
Full review works on the cost and the clock. Every legitimate step is invoked, so the project costs more to pursue: weeks of documentation, vendor patience, management attention. As time passes the project also looks worse, because launch windows close and sponsors cool. Nothing has to be argued against the initiative itself. It works when the gate is mandatory, the reviewer controls it, the review is what the policy genuinely requires, and the initiative has a hard outside deadline that full review strains.
The thinking behind it
Oliver E. Williamson Oliver Williamson's Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications (1975) rests on the assumption that some people are opportunistic, and holds that organizations exist partly to safeguard transactions against that hazard. Procurement and legal reviews are such safeguards, legitimate by design. Applying every one of them to a rival's contracts uses the organization's own protections, which is why the move is hard to fault, and why it must stay inside what the policy requires.
Ronald H. Coase Ronald Coase's The Problem of Social Cost (1960) argues that because bargaining is costly, how expensive it is to reach agreement often decides what happens. Every additional review step raises the cost of closing a contract, and against a hard deadline enough cost settles the outcome without any argument about merit. Coase's point explains why the gatekeeper's discipline about turnaround times is what separates review from obstruction.
When it fits
Gatekeepers in legal, procurement, security, or compliance can use it when they believe an initiative carries risks the sponsor has not priced and their function's full review is a legitimate requirement. You need published requirements and the discipline to apply them the same way to everyone. It fails if your own projects get shortcuts the rival's do not.
How to use it well
Apply the policy as written, and publish the requirements at the start, so the sponsor sees the full path on day one.
- Meet your own turnaround times on every submission.
- Put your substantive concerns in writing, as risks to be priced, separate from process.
- Tell the sponsor about any escalation or expedited path that exists.
- Apply the same reviews to your allies' contracts.
- Log every request and response with its date, so the record shows the review ran on time.
Let the review find what it finds, and if it turns up nothing, sign promptly and tell the sponsor.
What it costs and where it backfires
You will be seen as the person who slowed the launch, and if the initiative fails because of the delay, you share the blame whatever the merits. Peers will watch whether you apply the same rigor to everyone. The policy itself is the limit. Inventing requirements, holding submissions past the policy's own turnaround, or hiding the expedited path is obstruction, and killing a project the company decided to pursue by running out its clock is sabotage.
When it is used on you
Measure your cycle times when your contracts run several times the department median while the reviewer opposed your initiative elsewhere, and bring the disparity to internal audit or the chief financial officer as data. Map every mandatory gate before you launch, ask for the expedited path, and keep your documentation complete and early.