Most governance business cases die in the rewrite, before the meeting even happens.

tgroenwals shared this post · 2h ago

Most governance business cases die in the rewrite, before the meeting even happens.

The pitch gets softened in the 48 hours before the meeting, the meeting happens anyway, and the funding question gets pushed to next quarter.

I have watched €2.4M in concrete GDPR exposure get rewritten as "significant regulatory risk" in that window. The pitch did not get worse exactly, but the teeth got pulled.

The image has five rows that decide whether a governance program gets funded or filed. Every row needs a number and a name attached. Without them, you get adjectives and vague accountability instead. Adjectives are the safer rewrite because they never say anything specific enough to be wrong, which is also why they never move budget.

The case that gets funded is the one that survives the rewrite.

I wrote a 30-day playbook for building the five artifacts and surviving the rewrite: https://lnkd.in/dRkqe64E

♻️ Repost if your last business case got softened the week before the meeting.

Adegoroye Adeyeye This is very real. I’ve seen the same. Once the numbers and clear ownership get stripped out, the whole thing turns into something that sounds safe but is impossible to act on.
The “surviving the rewrite” point is key. If risk isn’t framed in concrete exposure with names attached, it almost always gets deferred rather than funded.

Rizwan Tufail The R A I S structure offers a clear way to shape governance conversations around measurable elements, John. It brings discipline into funding discussions through simple clarity in each layer.