Many small decisions, each within someone's local authority, carry out a change that would draw central review and organized opposition if it arrived as one large proposal.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Shrinking a line of coatings additives with loyal customers and a vocal champion in sales was the decision the president of a specialty chemicals division had reached. A formal discontinuation would have gone to the executive committee and drawn a fight. At the quarterly planning meeting she told her direct reports that the line was no longer a priority, and asked each of them to make the resource decisions their roles already covered. Over the next two quarters the plant scheduler cut its lab hours, the regional marketing director moved its budget to newer products, and pricing raised its minimum order. Each decision went through its normal channel, and she told the product manager directly what was happening and why. Customers received the standard notice on the new minimums. When the sales champion objected, she explained the decision and offered him the larger accounts in the growth line.
Why it works
Because every action falls within someone's existing authority, taking it looks easier: no board paper, no central review, no political capital spent on one large decision. By the time the pattern is visible, resisting looks costlier, because opposition has to reverse many settled decisions instead of blocking one proposal. It is built on a decentralized structure with real local discretion, opposition that waits for a formal trigger, and actions that fall below review thresholds in substance as well as on paper.
The thinking behind it
Thomas C. Schelling Schelling's Arms and Influence (1966) describes salami tactics: a line crossed in slices, each too small to justify a response. Each resource decision on the additives line is a slice below the threshold at which the executive committee would act. The clean form takes only slices that are ordinary decisions in their own right, and stops before any slice is cut to fit under a threshold.
Mark Granovetter Granovetter's The Strength of Weak Ties (1973) shows that acquaintances who connect separate groups carry new information across a network more than close ties do. A change spread across scheduling, marketing, and pricing is invisible inside each silo and visible only to someone with ties across them. That is why an auditor or a well-connected peer usually assembles the pattern, and why the sponsor does better telling the product manager directly.
When it fits
Decentralized execution suits a leader whose managers already hold the authority each step needs, for a change that is defensible on its merits but would draw a disproportionate fight as one decision. The change has to divide into ordinary decisions, and you need a willingness to explain it to anyone affected.
How to use it well
Set the direction openly with the people who will make the decisions, and let each act inside the authority they already hold. Stakeholders who find out late tend to feel denied a forum, so telling them directly costs a little speed and saves most of the backlash.
- Confirm that each step really falls under existing local authority, with no threshold avoided by splitting.
- Tell the people most affected, such as the product owner, what is happening and why.
- Give customers and other outsiders every notice they are owed.
- Answer objections when they come, and offer the people who lose something a place in what grows.
What it costs and where it backfires
People who learn of the change from its effects often feel they were denied a hearing, and that grievance can outlast the change itself. If an auditor or a peer assembles the pattern, you may have to defend all the decisions together. The line is splitting: dividing a decision that requires review into pieces sized to avoid it, or keeping the direction from people entitled to know it, turns decentralized execution into evasion.
When it is used on you
Map the related decisions with their dates, owners, and the guidance behind them, and take the map to someone who works across silos, such as internal audit. Ask for the pattern to go to oversight as one decision, stated plainly: discontinue, change, or support.