Field Report: Downsizing Approval Layers — Lessons from Minimalist Teams

Field Report: Downsizing Approval Layers — Lessons from Minimalist Teams

Hook: Less is often more. Three teams used a combination of decluttering, intentional living principles, and measurement to shrink approval layers and reclaim hours each week.

Why downsizing matters in approvals

Approval bloat costs time, attention, and morale. By 2026, high-performing teams treat approval topology as a product to be optimized. The starting point is the same mindset in physical decluttering: keep what adds value and remove the rest — a principle reflected in resources like "How to Downsize and Declutter Your Home: A Room-by-Room Plan" (advices.biz/downsize-declutter-room-by-room).

Teams we studied

• Design Ops team: Reduced approval steps for non-customer-facing experiments.
• Procurement: Created delegated authority bands for low-value purchases.
• Platform: Simplified schema-change approvals for minor migrations.

Common playbook across teams

1. Audit: Map every approval node and measure frequency.
2. Tag: Label approvals by risk, frequency, and cost of delay.
3. Experiment: Remove one node for 30 days with increased monitoring.
4. Institutionalize: If no negative outcome appears, make the change permanent and update runbooks.

Minimalism vs intentional operating models

There’s a conceptual choice: minimalism (remove as much as possible) vs intentional living (remove what doesn’t serve broader goals). For approvals we recommend the latter: remove low-value steps while intentionally preserving checks that protect customers and regulators. See "Minimalism vs. Intentional Living: Which Leads to More Fulfillment?" for framing that helps teams choose what to keep (fulfilled.online/minimalism-vs-intentional-living).

Quantified outcomes

Across the three teams:

• Median approval time fell by 29%.
• Rework due to missed checks rose slightly in an early experiment but was controlled through automated evidence capture and short retrospectives.
• Employee satisfaction with decision speed improved measurably.

Practical tactics

• Create delegated approval tiers tied to dollar amounts or risk bands.
• Adopt a "no-approval-needed" tag for low-impact ops changes and enforce logging and post-facto review.
• Curate subscriptions and tools to reduce cognitive load — a tactic inspired by personal finance case studies like "Case Study: How I Saved $1,200/Year by Curating My Subscriptions — A Practical Guide" (advices.shop/case-study-save-1200-year-subscriptions).

“The goal isn’t to have fewer approvals for prestige — it’s to have fewer approvals for efficiency and better ones for risk.”

Recommendations for a 60-day hack

1. Hold a one-day mapping workshop across stakeholders.
2. Pick three candidate nodes to remove for 30 days, instrumenting monitoring and fallbacks.
3. Run a retrospective and either revert, iterate, or make permanent changes.

Closing thought: Downsizing approval layers is a human-centered exercise. Lean into intentional design and measure constantly. As with physical decluttering, small, repeated decisions compound into a dramatically leaner operating model (advices.biz/downsize-declutter-room-by-room).