The risk register names risks. It almost never names the person who creates them.

Large ERP programs operate within organizational hierarchies in which authority, influence, and commercial relationships do not always align with formal governance structures. The person who can do the most damage to program outcomes is often not the person who appears most prominently in the governance documentation.

The Governance Condition
The disruptive stakeholder is not a villain. They are usually a senior, commercially successful leader with a legitimate stake in the program’s outcome and a strong view on how that outcome should be achieved. Their influence is real because their authority is real. The problem is that their authority is exercised informally.

In one global manufacturing business, a newly appointed CIO arrived six months into a program that had been scoped, approved, and contracted around a specific platform. Within three months, the CIO had opened conversations with two alternative vendors. The stated rationale was platform performance. The underlying driver was familiarity with a different platform from a previous role. The program was delayed by five months. The governance structure had no mechanism for identifying that the disruption had an organizational origin rather than a technical one.

Technology preference masquerading as business need is one of the most expensive variants of this pattern. Governance exists to separate business need from personal preference. In most programs, that function does not formally exist.

A second variant appears at the business unit level. In one North American industrial distribution program, a business unit general manager informally committed to a configuration choice with the systems integrator in a working session not reflected in the governance record. By the time the configuration choice was formally identified, it had been built into three months of delivery work. Reversing it required a scope review that cost more than the configuration was worth.

Governance Pattern: Informal Authority Outside Governance

Observed when:

  • Program decisions are being shaped by conversations that do not appear in the formal governance record
  • Scope or design changes trace back to informal direction from senior stakeholders rather than formal change control
  • The risk register identifies technical and delivery risks but not organizational and political ones
  • A senior stakeholder's preferences are being accommodated within the delivery structure without formal governance approval

Commercial consequence:

Scope changes that are commercially significant but difficult to formally attribute. Delay caused by time required to reconcile informal commitments with formal governance positions.

If This Feels Familiar
  • Program decisions appear to be made in the steering committee but the real decisions appear to have been made elsewhere.
  • A senior individual's preference for a particular approach is being treated as a constraint rather than an input.
  • The delivery team is managing expectations with a senior stakeholder in ways not visible to the governance structure.
  • The governance record shows a coherent decision-making process, but the people involved know the real decisions were made differently.

Board Questions

1.Are there senior stakeholders whose informal authority is shaping program decisions in ways that do not appear in the governance record?
2.Does the governance structure have a mechanism for identifying when a scope decision was driven by informal stakeholder direction?
3.Is there a defined process for managing situations where a senior executive's preference conflicts with formally approved governance decisions?
4.Who has the authority to tell a senior stakeholder their preference cannot be accommodated without formal governance approval?
5.If the program's most significant risks are political and organizational rather than technical, is the risk register equipped to surface them?

Governance Intervention

Decision Authority Framework. A documented, agreed hierarchy for program decisions that defines who can direct, who can influence, and who cannot redirect without formal approval.

Governance Design Review. An examination of the formal governance architecture against the actual decision-making patterns operating within the program.

TRC Solutions provides independent governance for SAP and ERP transformation programs. The Governance Engine is the institutional framework through which TRC carries that accountability.