Design Approval Ladders in Quelixa

Four heads, one ladder

Lina: Monday the eleventh of January. Northwind opens a customer success hub in Dubai on the first of March.

Amara Okafor: Four specialists, James. In their seats before the first customer is.

James Whitfield: Four new heads in a new city — and our ladder would treat it exactly like one replacement.

David: Three signatures, and nobody from Finance.

James Whitfield: Not after today.

Lina: Welcome to Practitioner. In this chapter James redesigns the approval ladder himself, and we watch two very different requests walk up it.

Lina: An approval ladder is not a fixed list of signatures. It is something you design: who signs, when a seat applies, how long it may wait, and who covers when someone is away.

What a ladder is made of

Lina: Four ideas carry this whole chapter.

Lina: Seats: who signs. And a seat belongs to a role, not to a person — people change jobs, roles stay.

Lina: Rules: whether a seat applies to this particular request at all.

David: So a small request can skip a seat a large one needs.

Lina: Exactly. Clocks: how long a seat may sit before somebody is reminded, and then before it moves on.

Lina: And cover: who decides when the person in the seat is on a plane.

The ladder as it stands

Lina: This is the requisition ladder on Monday morning, in the designer.

Lina: Three seats: the department head, HR analysis and the approving authority. Every requisition, of any size, walks all three.

David: And a refusal?

Lina: Drops to this lower path at any seat: marked rejected, the requester is emailed, and the run ends.

Lina: The small flag on the department head says four eyes: whoever raised a requisition can never approve it.

David: The person asking is never the person saying yes.

Lina: Never — whatever else James changes today, that stays.

The clock it counts in

Lina: Before he touches the ladder, James sets the clock it counts in.

Lina: Monday to Friday, nine to six.

Lina: And the holidays, one per line — New Year, Eid, Good Friday, the UAE's National Day, Christmas.

David: So a seat's twenty-four hours are working hours.

Lina: Working hours. A request submitted on Friday evening does not go overdue over the weekend.

Lina: If your work schedules already live in Quelixa, you pick one here instead.

A draft beside the live ladder

Lina: Then he opens the ladder and makes a draft.

Lina: The strip says what that means: the live ladder keeps running, and nothing changes until he publishes.

Lina: In the draft he adds one seat, between HR and the authority: Finance Review.

David: So every requisition now goes to Finance?

Lina: No. And that is the whole point of the next two screens.

A seat that belongs to a role

Lina: The seat is given to a role, Finance Controller, and the designer checks it at once: it resolves to one person, Priya Raman, the chief financial officer.

David: Why a role, and not simply Priya?

Lina: Because Priya takes holidays, and one day she will change jobs. The role stays; whoever holds it is asked.

Lina: And she has twenty-four working hours to decide.

When the seat applies

Lina: And here is the rule. The seat applies when the position is new, or when the request is for three people or more.

Lina: Any one of the two is enough.

David: And when neither is true?

Lina: The seat is walked past — and recorded as skipped, with the reason. Nobody approves on Priya's behalf.

Lina: Its exits are like every seat's: approved goes on, refused goes down.

Rules that hold up

Lina: A few habits make rules like this last.

Lina: Put the rule on the seat itself. One place to read it, one place to change it.

Lina: Write rules about the request, never about the person asking — headcount, whether the post is new, the pay.

David: So the answer is the same whoever submits.

Lina: The same. Give every seat to a role, and keep every refusal on one path, so a rejection always reads the same way.

A seat that cannot stall

Lina: One more change, on the department head.

Lina: If the seat sits untouched for sixteen working hours, it escalates: the task is handed to the Recruitment Manager role — James. A reminder every eight hours before that.

David: Two working days, then it moves.

Lina: Two working days.

Who signs while I am away?

Lukas Brandt: I'm in Dubai for the fit-out until the twenty-second, Kenji. Can you carry my approvals?

Kenji Sato: Operations as well as IT, for ten days. As long as it's on the record.

Lina: Lukas Brandt heads Operations — so he is the department head on Amara's request.

Cover, on the record

Lina: On his own screen, Lukas sets a standing delegation.

Lina: His approvals go to Kenji Sato, from this afternoon until six on the twenty-second, with the reason in his own words.

Lina: And the note is precise: tasks created while it runs go to Kenji; tasks already waiting stay put.

David: And Kenji signs as Kenji?

Lina: As Kenji, for Lukas. You will see both names.

A rehearsal against a real record

Lina: Before publishing, James asks the designer what would happen to Amara's Dubai requisition, drafted this morning.

Lina: The department head is Lukas — so, with the delegation, it asks Kenji, for Lukas.

Lina: Finance Review applies — four new positions — and it asks Priya.

David: And nothing was actually sent?

Lina: Nothing is written. The strip compares the draft with the live ladder: one new seat, three new connections, one removed.

Lina: At five past four he publishes.

David: And a request already half-way up the old ladder?

Lina: Finishes on the ladder it started on. Nobody's request changes route mid-flight.

Two requests, one ladder

Lina: Tuesday morning. Two requisitions go in, half an hour apart.

Amara Okafor: Dubai: four specialists, all new positions.

Daniel Okoro: And one QA engineer for Lahore — a replacement, into a post we already have.

Lina: Same ladder. Watch how differently they walk it.

Two tasks, two reasons

Lina: Half past ten, Kenji's approvals.

Lina: The Dubai requisition at the department head seat —

Lina: and in the delegation column: for Lukas Brandt.

David: So he can see which seat is his and which he is covering.

Lina: At a glance. The Lahore one is his own; he heads IT. He approves Dubai before eleven. Lahore, he doesn't get to.

Priya, at her seat

Lina: Wednesday afternoon, on Priya's screen.

Lina: The strip across the top is the ladder itself: department head and HR ticked, and Finance, where it sits now.

Lina: Her one action: approve, at Finance Review.

David: And the summary names who it is waiting on.

Lina: Her.

Every seat, with a note

Lina: The approval trail: Kenji Sato, for Lukas Brandt, with his note. Elena, for HR, with hers.

Lina: Finance Review, now — due Friday at four.

David: Friday? It reached her Wednesday morning.

Lina: At ten. Twenty-four working hours: eight on Wednesday, nine on Thursday, seven on Friday.

Lina: The calendar James set on Monday, doing its job. She approves just after three.

Escalated — and a seat it will skip

Lina: Thursday morning, the Lahore requisition.

Lina: At twenty to five on Wednesday its sixteen working hours ran out, and the seat was escalated — from Kenji Sato to James.

David: Automatically?

Lina: On the clock. Somebody accountable decides, instead of nobody.

Lina: And further down: Finance Review, will be skipped. One position, a replacement into a post that already exists — the rule does not apply.

Lina: The card above says the same thing.

Sanctioned

Lina: By half past eleven, Dubai is through.

Lina: Every seat with a name and a note — and the department head reads: Kenji Sato, for Lukas Brandt.

Lina: And approval did what approval does: the job post for four customer success specialists exists, ready for its advert.

David: Four days from a blank page to a sanctioned post, with Finance in the loop.

The run, on the graph

Lina: Last, back in the designer: James inspects the Lahore run on the graph itself.

Lina: The escalated seat — thirty-one hours on the wall clock.

David: But only sixteen of them counted.

Lina: Sixteen working hours, exactly the limit James set on Monday.

Lina: And Finance Review: skipped, with the reason. Not approved — skipped.

Three things to take away

Lina: Three things to take away.

Lina: Rules live on seats, so a request meets exactly the seats it needs — and a skipped seat says why.

Lina: Clocks run in working hours, and escalation means no request waits on one inbox.

David: And nobody signs in somebody else's name.

Lina: Never. A delegate signs as themselves, for the person they cover.

Costed, then advertised

Priya Raman: Four heads, costed and signed before a single advert goes out. That's all I wanted.

James Whitfield: And the Lahore replacement never waited for you.

Lina: Next chapter, the Dubai post goes out — and some of the best people for it are already inside Northwind: referrals and internal moves.

Lina: That was approval ladders you design. See you in chapter two.