The tolerated pain
A complete request sits with an approver while delivery waits. The requester sends reminders, a manager checks progress, and colleagues adjust their plans. Businesses tolerate this because review serves a legitimate control purpose and waiting does not arrive as a separate invoice. But the time taken to make a decision and the time spent in its queue are different operating measures.
Operational consequence
Trace one request from submission through readiness for review, decision and release to the next activity. Separate missing-information delay from time when the approver had everything required. Identify whether the waiting task lies on the delivery path or whether people can move to equally useful work. A queue can create repeated rescheduling and chasing even when nobody is completely idle.
Financial consequence
Measure chasing cost as reminder and status-check hours multiplied by the loaded hourly cost of the people involved. Add documented rescheduling and rework at their respective rates. Value genuinely blocked paid capacity separately, excluding time already counted and time productively redeployed. These quantities explain labour absorption without assuming that every hour of elapsed waiting is an hour of lost work.
Keep delay separate from loss
A delayed delivery is not automatically a lost sale. Record incremental overtime, expedited purchases or other actual costs caused by the queue. Where timing affects cash receipt, show the amount and duration of the delay without calling the full receipt a loss. Only assign a lost commercial outcome when evidence connects it to the approval wait. The model needs the organisation’s records, not a generic percentage.
Commercial urgency
Review the queue when recurring approval delay threatens committed work or requires repeated intervention by senior staff. Prioritise the decision point with the largest evidenced consequence, rather than whichever has the longest average wait. A long queue on noncritical work can matter less than a short queue that repeatedly blocks a customer handover.
Resolution
Name the decision owner and the risk each review controls. Provide a complete request at intake, visible status and an authorised substitute for absence. Have the control owner assess whether routine cases can follow predefined thresholds and whether independent reviews can proceed together. Preserve necessary authority and audit evidence. Test changes on a bounded request class and compare chasing effort, elapsed time, errors and control exceptions before widening them.
The economic meaning
The aim is to preserve useful review while reducing its avoidable queue cost. A faster approval process has commercial value when it releases constrained work or removes measured handling effort without creating a larger control problem.
Sources and method
This is a diagnostic cost model, not a client case study or an industry benchmark. It uses the operating condition described above and requires your own time, transaction and cost records. No numerical loss or saving is asserted. The related Mellorca article supplies context; the model does not rely on current product features or external statistics.