Five People, Five Different Answers

I like to ask this question early in almost every diagnostic: “Who actually has to approve a discount over 10%?”

I asked it once to five different people at the same company, separately, same day. Got five different answers. The sales manager said it was her call. The controller said anything over 10% needed the owner's sign-off. Two reps said they'd just been discounting whatever felt right for years. The owner said he thought the sales manager had it handled.

Nobody was being difficult. The authority had just never actually been written down — it had evolved informally, differently, in five different heads, over probably a decade.

That's not a people problem. That's Leak #3 wearing a different hat: an undocumented process that everyone's confidently guessing at, in five slightly different directions.

If I asked five people in your business the same “who approves this?” question today, how many matching answers do you think I'd get?