There's No Single Source of Truth (And That's Why Your Approved Projects Keep Going Sideways)

Here's a scenario that's likely playing out in your organization right now.

Three months ago, leadership approved a customer portal redesign. Everyone nodded enthusiastically in the meeting. Work began. But now the project is behind schedule, over budget, and somehow includes features that no one remembers approving.

The product manager insists the original scope included mobile optimization. The engineering lead swears it was desktop-only. The designer is building for tablet-first because "that's what the stakeholder said." And leadership? They're asking why a "simple refresh" has turned into a full platform rebuild.

What happened? The same thing that happens to most approved initiatives: the moment the meeting ended, everyone walked away with a different understanding of what was actually agreed.

Welcome to the single biggest execution killer in modern organizations: the absence of a single source of truth.

The Meeting Memory Problem

Here's the uncomfortable reality about how most initiatives get documented: they don't.

Someone takes notes during the approval meeting. Maybe. Those notes get scattered across email threads, Slack channels, and individual notebooks. By the time work actually starts, the original context has been filtered through multiple conversations, assumptions, and interpretations.

The result? Every stakeholder has their own version of "what we decided."

I call this the "meeting memory problem." It's not that people are lying or trying to be difficult. It's that human memory is unreliable, and organizational context shifts constantly. What felt clear and obvious in the moment becomes ambiguous and contested three weeks later.

And ambiguity, in execution environments, is poison.

Why This Destroys Project Momentum

The absence of clear documentation doesn't just create confusion—it creates organizational paralysis.

When teams don't have a definitive reference for what was approved, every decision becomes a negotiation. Should we include the advanced reporting features? Depends who you ask. Do we need to integrate with the legacy system? Different stakeholders give different answers.

I worked with a SaaS company where this pattern had become so pervasive that project kickoffs routinely took three weeks—not because of planning complexity, but because teams spent most of their time re-litigating decisions that had supposedly already been made.

Scope Creep by Assumption – Without clear boundaries, stakeholders assume their interpretation is correct and start adding requirements that may or may not have been part of the original agreement.

Accountability Evaporation – When commitments aren't documented, ownership becomes murky. Everyone can claim they weren't responsible for the parts that went wrong.

Timeline Fantasy – Original estimates become meaningless because no one can agree on what was actually estimated. Every delay gets blamed on "changing requirements" even when the requirements were never clear.

Political Leverage Games – Different stakeholders cherry-pick favorable interpretations of vague decisions to support their preferred outcomes.

The result? Projects that should be straightforward execution exercises turn into endless re-alignment meetings.

The Real Cost of Informal Handoffs

Most organizations treat project approval like a relay race with no baton. The approval meeting ends, someone yells "go," and execution teams are supposed to figure out what they're running toward.

This informal handoff model might work for small, simple initiatives. But it's a disaster for anything complex, cross-functional, or strategic.

Without a formal artifact that captures what was actually decided, you get:

Revisionist History – Stakeholders unconsciously rewrite the original agreement to match current preferences or political needs.

Context Loss – The rationale behind key decisions gets forgotten, making it impossible to make good trade-offs when problems arise.

Version Control Chaos – Different stakeholders reference different versions of the "plan," often without realizing they're working from incompatible assumptions.

The solution isn't better meeting notes or stronger memories. It's treating approved initiatives like the organizational commitments they actually are.

The Green Light Document Solution

Every approved initiative needs a single, authoritative document that captures what was actually agreed. Not a 50-page requirements spec. Not a loose collection of meeting notes. A crisp, clear artifact that serves as the handoff between approval and execution.

Here's what belongs in a proper Green Light Document:

Initiative Summary – A one-paragraph description of what we're building and why, written in plain language that any stakeholder can understand.

Scope Boundaries – What's explicitly included and, crucially, what's explicitly excluded. The "what this isn't" section prevents most scope creep.

Success Criteria – How we'll know when this is done and whether it worked. Specific, measurable outcomes rather than vague aspirations.

Key Dependencies and Risks – What could derail this project, what other work it depends on, and how we'll mitigate the obvious failure modes.

Resource Commitments – Who's accountable for delivery, what budget was approved, and what timeline was agreed.

Review Cadence – How often we'll check progress and who makes trade-off decisions when reality hits the plan.

This isn't bureaucracy. It's clarity. And clarity, in execution environments, is competitive advantage.

Making It Stick

The Green Light Document only works if it becomes the official handoff artifact. No document, no kickoff. No exceptions.

Assign Clear Ownership – Every initiative needs one person accountable for maintaining the authoritative version. Version changes get tracked and discussed in governance meetings.

Store It Centrally – Use a shared location that everyone can access. Wiki pages, project management systems, or shared drives. Just make sure it's findable.

Reference It Religiously – In every status review, milestone check, and trade-off discussion, anchor back to the Green Light Document. When scope questions arise, that's your baseline.

Update It Intentionally – When circumstances change—and they will—update the document deliberately. Don't let it drift from reality, but don't change it casually either.

The goal is to make the Green Light Document the definitive reference for what was approved, why it was approved, and how success will be measured.

The Cultural Shift

Adopting formal Green Light Documents requires a cultural shift from "we all know what we agreed" to "let's make sure we actually do."

Some people will resist this. They'll say it's too formal, too rigid, or too time-consuming. They'll argue that "we're all adults here" and can remember what was decided.

They're wrong. Not because they're not adults, but because organizational context is complex and human memory is fallible.

The most successful execution teams I work with don't rely on memory. They rely on documentation. Not because they don't trust each other, but because they understand that trust without clarity is just wishful thinking.

The Payoff

Organizations that adopt consistent Green Light Documentation see immediate improvements in:

Project Velocity – Less time spent re-litigating decisions means more time spent executing them.

Stakeholder Confidence – When everyone knows what was agreed, they stop second-guessing the plan and start supporting it.

Quality Outcomes – Clear success criteria make it easier to deliver what was actually requested rather than what someone thinks they remember requesting.

Organizational Learning – Documented decisions become institutional knowledge rather than personal memory.

Look, I know this sounds like more overhead in a world that already feels over-processed. But informal handoffs aren't faster—they're just more chaotic.

The best execution teams don't wing it. They document it. And they do it before the stakes get high.

Your approved initiatives deserve better than meeting memories and hopeful assumptions. Give them the clarity they need to actually succeed.

Want the complete framework for creating bulletproof project handoffs that eliminate confusion and accelerate delivery?

Download our free guide: Survive and Thrive – 7 Critical Moves for On-Time Delivery Without Burning Out Your Team 👉 www.techleaderadvance.com/thrive