The approval rule held for two months. Then an urgent case came up, the owner decided quickly, and afterwards everyone asked again. That is not an anecdote, it is the usual pattern. Treat it as a question of character and you will repeat it on the next attempt.

Why relapse is the norm

A new structure competes with a practised path that is faster. As long as asking stays cheaper than deciding, asking wins. The old practice is not worse organised, it is rehearsed. So introducing something is not enough; there has to be a reason why the new way is still the easier one the third time round.

Three things that hold

A named owner of the rule. Not “the team”, not “management”.
A review point with a date, where it is checked whether the rule held — before it quietly lapses.
Visible handling of exceptions: whoever bypasses a rule does so with a stated reason, not silently.

The third point matters most and is most often skipped. A rule whose exceptions stay invisible does not get broken — it becomes gradually irrelevant without anyone ever deciding that.

Where the method comes from

The foundations are old and well documented. Kotter's work on change processes and Rogers' adopter categories have described for decades that adoption is a process with phases rather than an event. Translated to an SME it mainly means: the question is not whether everyone comes along, but who goes first and how the rest notice.

The honest measure

Whether a structure holds shows not in the fact that it was introduced but in the fact that it survived an exception. Before that, every rollout is a statement of intent with a calendar entry.