Avoiding Approval Loops in Emails

Ever been a part of an endless content review cycle with too many reviewers, preferential comments all over the place, and people downloading the doc to 'take it offline'? I feel your pain. 😬 It's an unecessary and avoidable challenge. This is what I see when I get under the hood of a painful review process: 🔹 no one has time 🔹 file control issues (email - gah!!) 🔹 too many reviewers are involved 🔹 lots of preferential changes 🔹 comments are in dozens of places 🔹 people don't know what to review for 🔹 no one wants to make the final decisions Here’s how to fix this so it's easier for everyone: ✅ always use a track changes feature ✅ Give people an explicit time limit - 3 days is reasonable ✅ Use a project management tool to track dates, file locations, progress, and owners ✅ Designate who makes final calls and let the author him/herself make those final changes ✅ Find a way to work online, for example on Teams or Google Drive, and STOP emailing files around ✅ Choose MAXIMUM three people to perform reviews. Your blog posts do not need to go all around the company for approval. Nip that one in the bud. ✅ Tell people exactly what they are reviewing for - grammar? Flow? Accuracy? Tell them what they DON'T have to review for - ie, most often grammar, if you have an editor. ✅ Be very specific with your request: "Your feedback on this blog/ebook/newsletter is important. Can you complete it by EOD Friday? The link to the file is here. Please use the track changes and commenting feature. If you cannot make that date, please let me know as soon as you can. If I don't hear from you, I will assume that you approved the content.' What other tips would you give to teams trying to manage content reviews?

Dear Product Manager, Nobody warned you that a huge part of the role would involve becoming a professional follow-up specialist… with a minor in email chasing and calendar negotiations. This is something that can be called an approval maze, Imagine you spend 3 hours writing the clearest product brief of your life, added diagrams, detailed business case and everything in-between that needs to be done, then you send it for approval. 👀 Day 1: nothing. Not even a thumbs-up emoji. 👀 Day 3: "Thanks, will review soon." The word “Soon” has become one of the most dangerous words in product management. 👀 Day 7: "Can we schedule a quick call to discuss?" A “quick call” that somehow needs five people, and two reschedules. 👀Day 10: "Actually, can you loop in Sarah from Finance?" Sarah from Finance is on leave. Meanwhile, your dev team is in standby, marketing wants a launch date. Your launch date is just around the corner and it is bleeding away time, all because you want to get approval because there’s a process on ground, as you can’t tell your dev to deploy to prod, because you’re being compliant to the standard of practice, so yeah, you kept on waiting and you're refreshing your inbox like it's a slot machine. Here's what you should know: 🎗️ Stakeholder alignment is not a one-time event, it's a relationship you build BEFORE you need approval. 🎗️ Brief your key stakeholders individually before the big group review. Kill objections in private, not in meetings. 🎗️ Executives are busy. Most people are skimming, not studying your masterpiece. Sometimes a sharp one-pager gets faster results than a beautiful 20-slide deck. 🎗️ Never leave timelines open-ended. Instead of: “Please review when you can.”Say: “I’d appreciate your feedback by Wednesday EOD so we can maintain the planned launch timeline.” That sentence alone can save you several unnecessary follow-ups and emotional damage. To the new PMs just starting out, please pay attention to this, the approval maze is real. The much more experienced PMs reading this will most likely be smiling, they know the pain of chasing one final approval while an entire team waits behind them, but the truth is great PMs learn to navigate it, not just complain about it. Your stakeholders are not obstacles. They're partners who haven't been properly briefed yet. Go brief them.

Trust my experience on this, This is killing your team’s performance. Its the same thing we thought will improve performance is making the teams under perform - Approvals. Approvals is one classic escape in marketing world, applies to all the teams. "Did you complete the content we spoke about?" "Yes, I sent it for your approval." Approval requests show up everywhere, emails, chats, project boards. Its humanly impossible to approve everything when you run large teams. Most of the times approvals are an excuse to delay. Worse, if it underperforms later, it’s weaponized: “This is content you approved.” I eliminated this completely with one simple step. I gave ownership on outcome not on task completion. A small but big shift in working dynamics. Now the rule is simple: Execute first. Show me the result. Execute the task without approvals. Lets check the outcomes. Most managers micromanage because they’re scared of poor outcomes. Ironically, that fear kills learning and ownership. When teams are accountable for results not permissions, they start thinking, improving, owning. So if you're still stuck in the “approval” loop… Let it go. Trust your team. Track the results. That’s it.

On average, it takes 8 days and 3.2 rounds of review to get a project deliverable approved. 7 in 10 project managers say chasing stakeholders for approvals slows down their teams significantly. This explains why projects fall behind schedule, resources are wasted, and deadlines become a constant source of stress. But… Because of these delays, project managers face constant roadblocks like: Endless email chains and follow-ups. Teams waiting idly for approvals that don’t come on time. Budget overruns caused by rework or missed timelines. Chasing approvals isn’t just time-consuming—it derails the entire project. When feedback or sign-offs are delayed, the ripple effect impacts everything: Planned resources go unused. Project milestones are missed. Team morale drops because of constant last-minute changes. Imagine this: You’ve coordinated with multiple stakeholders, only to spend days waiting for someone’s approval. Meanwhile: Your team is idle, wasting valuable hours. You’re scrambling to keep stakeholders aligned. Timelines are collapsing, and you’re stuck fixing the mess. This endless cycle of chasing approvals leaves you overwhelmed and exhausted. So, how do you take back control? The answer lies in streamlined approval workflows. Here are 3 actionable tips to get faster project approvals: 1. Set non-negotiable deadlines: Assign clear due dates for every review stage and automate reminders to keep stakeholders accountable. 2. Be specific in your requests: Specify exactly what needs to be approved whether it's a project charter, timeline, or deliverables so stakeholders know where to focus. 3. Centralize approvals: Use a single tool or platform for feedback and sign-offs to eliminate confusion and back-and-forth emails. The next time you’re stuck waiting for project approvals, ask yourself: • Have I communicated clear deadlines? • Am I specific about the feedback I need? • Is my approval process centralized and easy to follow? Take these steps, and you’ll not only stop chasing approvals but also keep your projects on track, under budget, and stress-free.

TIRED OF CHASING APPROVALS? I BUILT THIS NOW MONDAY.COM ESCALATES TO SLACK AUTOMATICALLY. NO FOLLOW-UPS NEEDED. I didn’t build this because I love automation. I built it because I hate chasing approvals. You know the kind. You send it. They mean to approve it. Life happens. Silence. No one’s wrong. Nothing’s “broken.” But work quietly stalls. So I stopped asking people to remember. In monday.com , I made a tiny board called Pending Approval. Four columns. Nothing fancy. If something sits too long, Make checks it and sends a private Slack nudge. Not public. Not awkward. Just… there. No follow-ups. No escalation meetings. No “just circling back” emails. The funny part? Once the reminder isn’t emotional, approvals move faster. Because the system nags not you. This isn’t about automation. It’s about removing the small frictions that drain teams every week. If you’ve ever wondered why approvals slow everything down even when everyone’s trying… this might explain it.

"Just keep me in the loop." Said every leader whose inbox has 10,000 unread emails. If you've ever asked your team to keep you posted on everything, Then wonder why you can't keep up with your inbox, you're not alone. Leaders who ask for constant updates, Often don’t define what “informed” actually means. So teams over-communicate to cover themselves, leaders drown in FYIs, and nobody gets what they need. Here’s what effective communication looks like (without flooding your inbox!): 1️⃣ Define what "in the loop" actually means. Most leaders say they want updates,  But what they really want is awareness of what matters. Be specific about what warrants an email, a Slack, or a meeting. Unclear: "Keep me posted on the project." Clear: "Flag me if we're more than 10% over budget or if timelines shift by more than a week. Otherwise, send a weekly summary on Fridays." 2️⃣ Trust your team to make decisions without you. Every email that says "just FYI", Is your team saying, “Please don’t be mad at me for making this decision.” If they don't need your input, don't make them loop you in. Ask yourself: "Do I need to do something about this, or just know it exists?" 3️⃣ Set clear communication standards. Leaders who say "keep me in the loop on everything", End up in the loop on nothing because they're drowning in information. Give clear standards and decision-making authority. Action: Set guidelines for what should be escalated, summarized, and not require your attention. The cost of unclear communication isn't just a cluttered inbox. It's wasted time, delayed decisions, and teams that second-guess themselves. Your team shouldn’t have to guess whether silence or spam is safer. Because clear communication standards do more than manage information (and your inbox!). They empower your team to lead without you. What's your best tip for managing communication overload? Drop it in the comments below. If you're a leader struggling with inbox overload and want practical systems to take back your time... Subscribe to The 5-Minute Leader. Every day you'll receive one video and insight, all covered in 5 minutes or less! Join today: https://lnkd.in/ezCguzc7 ♻️ Repost to help another leader delegate communication effectively. And follow me, Cicely Simpson, for more on delegation, clarity, and leading without burnout.