The most polite way to stall a transformation is to put every method question out for comment.
In one program I worked on, a colleague proposed assessing progress on five levels. The definitions were excellent; the names were left open. In a leadership team working across several languages, five names out for comment come back as five debates. So I decided them the next day and wrote them into the meeting invitation as decided, with the definitions unchanged. I asked the colleague for the one input I genuinely lacked: who approves the top two levels.
Two kinds of question
A transformation carries questions about what the organization will become: which functions merge, who owns which results. Those are strategic. They belong to the sponsor and deserve a proper argument.
Then there are questions about how the work is run: naming, templates, cadence, tooling. These need an answer more than the best answer. Treating them as consultations feels respectful. In practice it makes the whole leadership team pay, in attention, for decisions one person was accountable for making.
A consistent method used by everyone beats a perfect method that half the leaders are still debating.
Speak in the grammar of a decision
Say "from now on it is this," not "what do people think of." Then ask only for the input you need. Asking for consent you do not need is not humility; it hands someone a decision and then acts surprised when it comes back changed.
Name things so they read the same in every language. A label that describes itself survives translation. A code or borrowed term means something different to each person in the room, and nobody notices until they disagree about whether something is finished.
Keep the agreed design as a visible list marked not reopened, and do not argue it in working sessions. Route it as a decision request, with evidence, to the forum that owns it. Sometimes the challenge is right, and that room will say so.
Prepare, do not send
The rule I hold most strictly: anything that speaks in a leader's name is prepared, not sent, until that leader has read it. That includes anything an AI assistant drafts. A draft waiting in a mailbox makes a slower program. A message sent in the wrong tone makes a damaged one. The sender is part of the message, and a message cannot be unsent.
Decide how the work runs, out loud and once. Save the argument for what the work is for.