Holding a rival's proposal to every approval step the process requires, the actor runs their own projects through every exemption the rules allow.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Robotic sorting at the three busiest hubs had been opposed by the vice president of operations at a parcel delivery company in two budget rounds, and in the spring the head of warehouse automation brought it back. The company's project risk framework, adopted after a failed system rollout the year before, required architecture, security, vendor, finance, and steering committee reviews for any initiative touching more than two business units. The sorting project touched four. At the steering committee the operations chief asked, on the record, that it complete every review its category required, and he raised his own concerns at each one. His own project, new handheld scanners for every driver, met the framework's definition of an equipment refresh and needed none of the reviews. The scanners shipped in ten weeks. The sorting project took seven months to clear, and its business case had to be rebuilt for the following peak season.
Why it works
Delay makes the rival's initiative worse on a clock the rival cannot control: the window closes, sponsors move on, and a twelve-month payoff becomes a thirty-month one. Every added gate makes it costlier, in the sponsor's time, the team's hours, political capital spent with each reviewer, and consultants hired to clear each step. Routing matters as much as review, since a project sent to the most conservative gatekeeper has a largely settled outcome. It works best when every gate is real and defensible on its own, so the bias shows only in the total.
The thinking behind it
Oliver E. Williamson Williamson's Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications (1975) assumes bounded rationality and some opportunism, and sees organizations as safeguarding transactions against both, which is why review layers exist. Each gate in a project framework carries that kind of justification. The move works because every step is defensible alone, and the gap between a rival's route and the actor's own shows only when someone compares them.
Jeffrey Pfeffer Pfeffer's Power in Organizations (1981) traces much organizational power to control of the decision process. Knowing how initiatives are categorized, and therefore which reviews they trigger, is a form of that control. An executive whose project counts as an equipment refresh moves fast, while a rival's cross-unit project meets every gate, so the outcome is shaped before any reviewer weighs the merits.
When it fits
Executives who own projects in an organization with a formal approval framework, facing a rival's initiative they doubt, and whose own work genuinely qualifies for lighter routes. It needs a process with real steps and published exemptions, applied the same way to everyone.
How to use it well
Learn the framework in detail: what triggers each review, what qualifies for exemption, and how initiatives are categorized.
- Categorize your own projects accurately, and claim every exemption they qualify for.
- Ask openly that the rival's proposal complete every review its category requires.
- Raise your concerns at the reviews themselves, on the record.
- Keep your own projects clean enough that nobody can say you skipped a step you owed.
A category stretched to fit is the first thing an auditor checks, so keep yours accurate and documented.
What it costs and where it backfires
Rivals will compare routes and cycle times, and if your exemptions look generous, they will push for a rule that removes them. A rival whose project dies of process may come back with a sponsor who outranks you. Stay inside the rulebook as written. Once you recategorize your projects to dodge reviews they owe, design new gates to catch the rival's kind of project, or plant questions to steer it to the most conservative reviewer, the asymmetry is your doing, and on the record it reads as arbitrary management.
When it is used on you
Document how the same gates treated comparable projects, with time to decision by sponsor and type, and map which stages kill projects and which only dilute them. Take the comparison to the board, internal audit, or a senior sponsor, and ask for standard categories that decide routing.