A project leader can be accountable in several conversations at once. A development sponsor expects progress against a delivery commitment. An operating colleague wants choices that will remain workable after handover. A commercial team needs a decision to fit an agreement. Those perspectives can be compatible, but a role described broadly as responsible for coordination does not explain what happens when they are not. The individual may become the place where the organisation leaves its disagreement.
I do not think every tension can be removed in advance. Complex work requires judgement and relationships, and a document cannot predict every situation. But there is a difference between a new question arising during work and a known conflict that management has chosen not to resolve. The second should not be concealed by giving someone a larger title and expecting personal influence to compensate for an incomplete account of authority.
Ask about a decision rather than a title
In our fictional review of nine project-leadership assignments, we asked the role holders and sponsors to discuss actual responsibility points. Twenty-seven were disputed. Some concerned who could decide directly; others concerned prior agreement or the route for escalation. The value of the exercise was not the number itself. It was the move from general descriptions of accountability to situations in which different people expected different actions from the same appointee.
A title can carry assumptions that vary between parts of a business. One sponsor may hear project director and infer broad decision authority. Another may regard the same person as a coordinator working within a tightly reserved approval structure. Neither interpretation becomes correct through repetition. The organisation needs to examine the relevant decision and the arrangements that govern it. A person should not discover the disagreement only when a consequential choice is challenged after the event.
I find it useful to ask each sponsor what evidence would make them comfortable with the role holder deciding independently. The answers often reveal a difference in the underlying concern. One person may be worried about financial commitment, another about operating consequences and another about technical assurance. Those concerns need different responses. Combining them into a vague requirement to keep everyone informed can make the role slower without clarifying which agreement is actually required.
The employee’s performance account should follow the authority assigned. If a decision requires sponsor agreement, the role holder should be assessed on the quality and timeliness of the proposal and escalation within that arrangement. It is unfair and unhelpful to describe the outcome later as if the person had unrestricted power to determine it. That does not remove accountability. It makes the account more accurate about what the individual could decide and what remained an organisational responsibility.
Respect the limits of the people document
The people function can help make responsibilities understandable, but a job description cannot override investment approvals, contractual arrangements or technical authority. Where a question depends on those matters, the relevant executives and advisers must decide. I am cautious about language that presents a completed role document as if it settles every governance issue around an assignment. It can record an agreed decision; it cannot create authority that the underlying arrangements do not provide.
This boundary matters particularly where several business interests are involved. A useful review should identify which matters can be clarified through ordinary management discussion and which require a different process. In our example, eighteen disputed points were resolved in agreed records. Nine went to executive sponsors for further decisions. The people team’s contribution was to distinguish those categories and keep the second visible, rather than claim that all roles had been clarified because the workshops were complete.
There is also a practical limit to detail. A role record that attempts to catalogue every possible action can become difficult to use. I would concentrate on consequential decisions, recurring interfaces and clear escalation principles. The document should help a person recognise the boundary of the role, not replace professional judgement with an exhaustive list. Regular discussion remains necessary, especially when the project moves into a different phase or the operating assumptions change.
The quality of the working relationship still matters. Sponsors need to respond when a matter is escalated and explain decisions that change the assignment. A route that exists only on paper can leave the appointee in the same position as before. I would therefore examine the response as well as the escalation: who receives the question, what context is needed and how an unresolved matter returns to the management account if no decision is made.
Keep the unresolved matters in the management account
The pressure to report completion is understandable. A programme has a timetable, leaders have attended reviews and the organisation wants to move on. In our case, however, publishing all nine roles as clarified would have hidden nine responsibility points still requiring executive decisions. I supported a less tidy report. The unresolved matters were named, assigned to sponsors and accompanied by an interim escalation route for the role holders.
That choice had a cost. Further executive time was needed, and the programme could not present a complete result on the original schedule. We also spent SGD 175,000 on facilitated review, project participation and follow-up. I regard those costs as part of the account, rather than evidence that role clarity should be avoided. The alternative would have left the same disagreement to be negotiated repeatedly by individuals whose authority was already uncertain.
Later review should ask whether the agreed responsibilities are being used and whether new conflicts have emerged. An organisation should not assume that a signed record remains sufficient through every phase of a project. Equally, every disagreement need not trigger a wholesale redesign. The useful discipline is to distinguish a decision within the existing arrangement from evidence that the arrangement itself needs revision. That judgement belongs in accountable management discussion, not in an informal contest between sponsors.
For a CHRO, the issue connects organisation design with the lived conditions of leadership. A capable person can spend considerable effort negotiating around a conflict that should have been addressed above the role. Helping the company see that problem is a substantive people contribution. The aim is not a world without tension. It is an organisation that recognises where a decision belongs, gives the appointee a workable remit and remains responsible for the questions it has not yet settled.