Stop Governing Plans. Start Governing Capital.
- Darren Emery
- Jan 19
- 6 min read
The Missing Control Model for Executives Funding Agile Work
Most executives don’t resist agile because they hate agility.
They resist it because they’re responsible for the P&L.
And somewhere between “empowered teams” and “lightweight governance”, a very real fear kicks in:
“If I remove stage-gates and status reports, how do I know where the money is going - and whether it’s working?”
That fear is rational.
According to recent data from StratNav, over 82% of strategic initiatives never progress beyond theoretical assumptions, and fewer than 17% of organisations actually track the KPIs they set.
In other words: the feeling of “losing control” isn’t emotional. It’s empirical.
Most governance systems were designed for certainty. Agile exposes uncertainty - and that exposure is often mistaken for loss of control.
What is irrational, however, is how most organisations try to solve it.
They replace control of reality with control of promises - and call it governance.
The Governance Gap Nobody Talks About
In the last decade, we’ve been very good at telling leaders what not to do:
Don’t use heavy frameworks
Don’t micromanage teams
Don’t demand detailed upfront plans
What we’ve been far less clear on is the replacement. So, what fills the vacuum?
Usually, it's the same status report, the same milestones, and the same traffic lights - slightly relabeled as "agile."
This means the underlying question never changes:
“Are we on track to deliver what we said we would?”
That is project governance logic - optimised for predictability of plans, not value.
But agile delivery creates a different obligation entirely:
“Is what we’re building worth continuing to fund?”
That’s a capital allocation question, not a delivery one.
Most organisations say they’ve “moved to products”, but still govern as if every initiative were a fixed-scope project. That mismatch is where agility quietly dies - not with resistance, but with compliance.
Why Stage-Gates Feel Safe (and Why They Lie)
Stage-gates survive because they create an illusion of control.
At each gate, leaders are shown:
% complete
Milestones achieved
Risks logged
Confidence levels asserted
None of these tell you whether the work is actually valuable.
They tell you:
How good the team is at meeting expectations
How well uncertainty has been hidden
As Dr. Mik Kersten, author of Project to Product, puts it:
“Activity-based proxy metrics have nothing to do with business outcomes... The process becomes the proxy for the result you want.”
When you govern by Red/Amber/Green (RAG) status, you are managing the proxy.
You are incentivising managers to keep the light Green, usually by cutting scope, hiding risk, or crunching the team.
The result isn’t delivery certainty.
It’s delayed failure - often discovered only after the capital is gone. By the time the truth surfaces, it’s usually too late to stop - and politically impossible to admit.
Stage-gates and RAG status reports measure projection.
Governance should measure consumption and validation.
The Funding Trap: Why You Can’t Govern Once a Year
There is a mechanical reason why organisations struggle to shift from "tracking plans" to "tracking value":
The Annual Budget.
In a traditional model, governance is done before the work starts.
You approve a £2m business case, lock the scope, and then governance becomes a compliance exercise to ensure the £2m is spent as predicted.
This creates a "Winner Take All" dynamic. Once a project is funded, it is effectively too big to fail.
The governance committee rarely has the political capital, or courage, to stop a project that is “Green” (on budget/time), even if the product is mediocre.
Agile governance requires moving from funding projects (fixed scope, fixed time) to funding capacity (fixed cost, variable outcomes).
The "Blank Cheque" Fallacy CFOs often fear that funding capacity means writing a blank cheque.
It is the exact opposite.
Project Funding: You commit £2m for 12 months. You verify value at the end. (High Risk).
Capacity Funding: You commit £500k for one quarter. You verify value before releasing the next quarter's funds. (Low Risk). It is not a retainer; it is a subscription to results.
This is not about spending more often - it’s about deciding more often.
When you fund a team/value stream for a quarter rather than a project for a year, governance changes from "Did you finish?" to "Should we renew your funding?"
This simple shift restores the C-Suite’s power. You are no longer trapped by a 12-month commitment made last November. You are making active investment decisions based on current reality.
A Different Unit of Control
If you want to govern adaptive work, you need to change the question leadership asks.
It's not:
“Are we on track?”
But:
“What have we learned for the money we’ve spent?”
Once you ask that question consistently, governance naturally shifts from tracking delivery to managing investment, based on two signals:
1. Value Consumed
What have we actually spent to get here?
Time
People
Run-rate
Opportunity cost
This is not budget vs plan. It’s capital consumed to date.
2. Value Validated
What evidence do we have that this work is worth more investment?
Solving a real problem?
Changing customer behaviour?
Reducing operational cost?
Creating optionality for the business?
Crucially, “value” does not always mean revenue. Early value is often risk reduction.
Month 1 Value: We validated the user need exists (Survey/Interviews).
Month 3 Value: We validated the technical feasibility (Prototype).
Month 6 Value: We validated willingness to pay (Beta Pilot).
If a team cannot demonstrate learning (leading indicators), revenue outcomes (lagging indicators) are accidental at best.
Importantly, “validated” does not mean internal sign-off, stakeholder approval, or positive sentiment. It means observable change in the real world.
Not outputs.
Not features.
Validated learning tied to economic outcomes.
Replace RAG With a Value Ledger
Instead of a Red/Amber/Green status, imagine every initiative governed through a simple lens that I call the Value Ledger:
Signal | Question Executives Should Ask | The Only Valid Answer (Example) |
Value Consumed | How much capital have we burned so far? | "We have spent £450k (Staff + Ops) over the last 3 months." |
Value Validated | What evidence do we have that this is worth more investment? | "Customer acquisition cost dropped by 12% in the pilot." (Note: If this box is empty or says 'on track', funding stops). |
Value at Risk | What assumptions remain untested, and what happens if they’re wrong? | "If the API integration fails next sprint, the £2m marketing launch is blocked." |
The rule is simple:
If Value Consumed is increasing and Value Validated is flat, funding should decrease - not continue by default.
If this feels uncomfortable, that’s the point.
Governance should create productive discomfort - early.
This turns governance from:
“Are we on plan?”
into:
“Is this still a good bet?”
Which is exactly how every other serious investment decision is made.
The "Zombie Project" Dividend
Why does this matter?
Because traditional governance is terrible at killing bad ideas.
In a recent study by Wellspring and Forrester, organisations using adaptive, portfolio-style governance saw their project cancellation rate jump from 6% to 20%.
That sounds like failure - until you realise it represents disciplined capital reallocation.
That is 14% of your capital reclaimed from "Zombie Projects" - initiatives that walk and talk like progress (consuming budget, holding meetings) but deliver zero value.
If you have a £50m change portfolio, your current governance is likely lighting £7m on fire every year on projects you should have killed months ago.
If your governance isn’t regularly stopping work based on evidence, you aren’t governing - you’re simply rubber-stamping.
The Control Executives Actually Want
Here’s the unsettling reality:
Executives don’t want more reporting.
They want faster truth.
They want to know:
Which bets are compounding
Which are stalling
Which should be killed before they quietly drain another £2m
Traditional governance hides this until it’s too late.
Agile governance, done properly, exposes it earlier.
That’s not loss of control.
That’s precision control.
The Shift in Executive Behaviour This Requires
This model only works if leadership evolves its role:
From: Approving scope, defending sunk cost, policing delivery
To: Setting intent, funding learning, actively stopping work
Most organisations struggle with this, not because it’s complex - but because it makes indecision visible.
And most governance systems were designed to hide indecision, not confront it.
Mature governance doesn’t protect leaders from hard calls - it equips them to make them earlier.
The Real Oxymoron isn’t “Agile governance”, it’s: “Strict control through unreliable information.”
If you want speed and safety, you don’t need more gates.
You need:
Fewer promises
Faster evidence
And governance that follows reality, not plans
That’s how you control speed - without breaking it.
Good governance doesn’t eliminate risk. It ensures you’re paying for learning, not surprises.
Next Week’s Challenge
If you want to test the health of your current governance, do this on Monday morning (this is a signal test, not a blame exercise):
Ask your PMO for a list of all "Green" projects.
Pick three at random.
Ask the project leads for the "Value Validated" evidence (not the milestone chart) for the last quarter.
If they give you a Gantt chart showing tasks completed, but no economic or customer outcome, you have found your governance gap.
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