Your project isn’t late because the work is slow. It’s late because it’s waiting.
Every draft sits in someone’s inbox. Every inbox belongs to someone with a full calendar. And every “quick review” joins a queue you can’t see.
This is the part nobody budgets for. The design took three days. The approval took three weeks. But the timeline only ever shows the three days.
So the work expands to fill the waiting. Revisions get squeezed. Launch dates slip. And the team that did the work gets blamed for the time the work spent sitting still.
If you want projects to move faster, don’t speed up the makers. Shrink the chain. Fewer approvers, a real deadline for each one, and a rule: Silence by Friday means yes.
Approval isn’t a step. It’s the whole schedule.