Decided on WhatsApp

The approval arrives in the tool on a Sunday morning, and it is not a decision. It is a transcript.

The deciding happens on Thursday night, in a WhatsApp group of six, over a voice note and a thumbs-up.

This is the shape of most of the choices I watch get made in this region. The workflow is real, the tool is paid for, the audit trail is tidy, and none of it is where the thinking happens. The thinking happens in the group, at whatever hour the person who matters is awake, in a mixture of two languages and a forwarded screenshot.

You can read who holds what off the membership lists. Somebody senior sits in four groups and reads none of them. Somebody junior sits in the one group where the founder actually replies, and their questions come back in minutes while a formal request waits a week. Somebody with a title that implies authority is in none of the groups at all, and learns what was agreed when a notification tells them.

So the chart on the intranet describes a company that does not meet, and the groups describe the one that does. Which is also a statement about trust, because admission to a group is not a permission anybody applies for. It is granted quietly, by one person, and never announced.

It is why a new process so rarely changes anything. Adding a stage to the workflow adds a stage to the transcript. If a decision keeps getting taken without the person who should be in it, the answer was never a form.

It was an invitation.