Fictional teaching example. The organisation, records and observations below are invented to illustrate assessment reasoning. This is not a client case, a completed pilot or evidence that ODLAMS produces a particular result.
The situation
A technical services firm finds that routine project variations keep returning to its delivery director. Team leaders have delegated authority, but work often waits while the director is in meetings. The initial explanation is that the team lacks confidence.
1. Set a boundary
The review focuses on routine variations within one delivery team. Safety-critical decisions, contractual exceptions and requests outside existing delegations remain excluded. The question is whether ordinary variations can move through the team without avoidable dependence on the director, while preserving necessary oversight.
2. Examine the evidence
In this fictional scenario, a reviewer compares the delegation document with recent variation records and accounts from the director, team leaders and a project coordinator. Decision traces show who received each request, what information was available, where it waited and why it was escalated.
The written delegation allows team leaders to approve certain variations. However, the relevant commercial guidance is accessible only to the director. Team leaders also describe earlier decisions being reversed without a clear explanation of the boundary.
Other records complicate the picture: some requests genuinely sit outside delegation, and an unusually busy period has added delay. These observations remain part of the assessment; they are not discarded because they weaken a simple story about dependency.
3. Develop a bounded finding
Illustrative finding: for the routine variations examined, formal delegation is not consistently usable. Restricted access to commercial guidance and unclear exception boundaries contribute to decisions returning to the delivery director.
This does not establish that every escalation is unnecessary, that staff capability is adequate in every case or that the whole organisation has the same pattern. A second assessor would examine the supporting records, challenge the reasoning and record agreement, modification or dispute. The example does not assume that review has taken place.
4. Propose a change
A bounded trial could give authorised team leaders access to the relevant guidance, clarify which exceptions still need approval and provide a named backup for routine decisions. The director and team would agree the boundaries and responsibilities before starting.
The trial would retain required technical and contractual checks. It would also provide a way for team leaders to seek advice without automatically transferring ownership of every decision upwards.
5. Define what to review
Before the trial, establish a baseline from comparable routine variations. Track elapsed approval time, the proportion escalated to the director, reasons for escalation, rework and exceptions requiring correction. Keep the definitions and scope consistent across the comparison.
After an agreed review period, examine both records and staff experience. Faster approval alone is not sufficient if errors or inappropriate decisions increase. Changes in workload or case complexity may also explain a difference.
6. Keep the conclusion open
If the evidence shows less avoidable escalation without unacceptable rework, the team could consider retaining the change. If the pattern persists, the reviewer should revisit the explanation: capability, capacity or another constraint may matter more than first thought.
No improvement result is claimed here. The example demonstrates how a finding can be challenged and tested, rather than supplying an invented success story or maturity score.
What this illustrates
The useful distinction is between responsibility written into a role and the conditions that allow someone to exercise it. ODLAMS examines that relationship through scoped evidence, explicit reasoning, practical changes and reassessment.
Read the Framework overview · Discuss a situation in your organisation