The Empty Chair in the Approval Chain: Making Leave a Delivery Control

By the middle of November, most UK delivery teams can say with reasonable confidence who will be at their desk in December. Far fewer can say who will be able to approve a change, release a payment or accept a risk during that period. The distinction matters. Annual leave is normally administered as an entitlement; in a delivery context it is also an operational variable, and one that is often left out of the plan until a decision stalls.

The problem is rarely the holiday itself. It is the unresolved authority that sits behind an empty chair. A project can absorb the absence of a skilled analyst for a fortnight. It struggles to absorb the absence of the only person authorised to sign off a design change, particularly when the work requiring that signature has been scheduled for the same week.

Holiday as an Operational Variable

Most delivery plans record effort in days and dependencies in sequence. They rarely record the availability of decision-makers as a constraint in its own right. As a result, leave appears in the plan as a resource gap, if it appears at all. The team knows someone is away; it does not always know which decisions travel with them.

That gap becomes more visible in December. Client organisations slow down, suppliers close sites, and internal governance forums are cancelled or postponed. The temptation is to treat the month as a write-off and to assume that anything unresolved will be picked up in January. In practice, work that is started without access to approving authority tends to create rework, not momentum. The January backlog is often assembled in December.

A simple control can reduce that risk without adding a layer of bureaucracy. The instrument is a short absence map: a two-page view of planned leave, the decision rights affected, the named deputy, and the handover evidence required before the person leaves.

What the Map Contains

The map should cover the next eight to ten weeks, not just the Christmas period. For each significant absence, record the dates, the role, and the decision rights that the role holds. Then identify the work that depends on those rights, the person who will act in the absence, and the point at which handover must be complete.

It is useful to separate three categories of authority. Some decisions are routine and can be delegated within existing limits. Some require a named deputy with written authority and a clear threshold. A smaller number should not be delegated at all and must be scheduled before the absence begins. The map is most valuable when it makes that third category explicit, because those are the decisions that will otherwise wait.

The final column should record the evidence of handover: a briefing note, a walkthrough of the live issues, a list of pending approvals with their current status. A diary entry that says 'back on the 5th' is not a handover.

Cover Is Not Authority

Many teams are careful to name a cover person and less careful about what that person can do. A deputy without delegated authority is a message-taker. The result is a queue of decisions that looks like progress because someone is answering emails, but which cannot move until the original approver returns.

Before leave begins, confirm the delegation in writing, including financial limits and any procurement or compliance constraints that apply in the organisation. Confirm the escalation route if the deputy reaches a threshold. Brief the people who will be affected, so that they are not learning about the arrangement when they need a decision.

The same discipline applies to single points of failure that are not managerial. A leave map often reveals clusters of knowledge held by one person: the only specialist who understands a legacy interface, the only contract manager who knows the supplier's escalation route. These are not always decision rights, but they are delivery dependencies. They belong on the same page.

Re-sequencing Before the Shutdown

Once the map exists, it should change the plan. Work that requires a scarce approver should be pulled forward or deferred deliberately. Work that can proceed under delegated authority should be confirmed as such. Work that will reach an approval gate during a shutdown should either be re-phased or given a pre-agreed decision route.

This is not a call for a general change freeze. It is a call for sequencing that reflects who is available, not just what is next on the plan. Publish cut-off dates for submissions that require specific approvers. Align supplier leave with your own where possible, particularly on programmes with joint governance. Review the map in the weekly delivery meeting from late November, and update it when leave changes.

The output should be a short list of decisions due before the break, a short list of decisions delegated for the break, and a short list deliberately held for January. The third list is legitimate, provided it is owned and dated.

The January Test

The measure of an absence map is not whether it eliminates leave. It is whether the first week of January is spent re-entering the work or reconstructing it. A team that knows which decisions were deferred, who owns them and when they will be taken can restart quickly. A team that relied on memory and goodwill will spend the month chasing context.

Keep the map as a live record through the period, and review it briefly in the new year. The comparison between what was predicted and what actually happened is the cheapest lesson available. The following November, the protocol will be shorter and more accurate.

Annual leave will always be an entitlement. In delivery, it is also a control. A two-page map, agreed before the Christmas crunch, is a modest instrument. It is also the difference between an empty chair and an unmanaged decision.