2021-01-14 19:55 UTC Ask for forgiveness, not permission
A colleague of mine asked me to explicitly put an LGTM on their design doc so that they could go ahead and implement it. The design doc was one I had previously reviewed and commented on, and had indicated that it seemed like a good idea, but I hadn't filled in the box saying that "my TL has said LGTM".
My answer: no. You don't need my permission.
Ask yourself: why do you want explicit permission? Is anyone asking you to get permission? What would happen if you just... did the thing?
Some people want LGTMs because that way they feel like if they make a mistake, they'll be covered. But that's flawed thinking in two ways. First of all, mistakes are fine. People make mistakes, we all make mistakes, mistakes are how we learn. If you're not making mistakes, then you're not taking enough risks to be successful. Secondly, even if making a mistake was bad, getting some people to sign off on something doesn't mean they are taking any more responsibility than if they didn't. You'd still be responsible for your decisions even if you got permission, and your leadership would still be responsible for your decisions if you didn't get permission.
I have a friend who used to work in Google Search on a tool called "Janitor". It was a tool that would garbage collect the results of processing our Web indexing — there's a lot of temporary files created in indexing the Web, and Janitor would go around deleting them when they weren't needed any more. He literally deleted petabytes of data regularly. One day, Larry Page was visiting his team and asked about this project. Larry asked, "how many files have you accidentally deleted?". My friend very proudly answered "I have never deleted a file that should not have been deleted! I have a 100% success record!".
Larry apparently responded "I think you should take more risks".
Some people want LGTMs because they feel that without them they aren't entitled to do their job. But... it's your job. That's why you were hired. You don't need additional permission to do your job. Your biweekly paycheck is all the permission you need.
Some people want LGTMs because they are not confident enough in their idea to execute it. Having leaders on the team put a stamp on their design doc gives them the confidence that the idea was good enough to execute. The thing is though, we won't know if it was a good idea or not until we try it. These stamps aren't saying "it's a good idea", they're saying "it's not an idea so terrible that I can predict its failure already based on my past experience"... and your leaders and team mates will tell you that something is a bad idea if they see it. That's why you ask for review. If they didn't arch their eyebrows and grimace when you explained your idea, then it's probably fine, and you don't need any more permission.
In conclusion: ask for forgiveness, not permission. Get reviews of your design docs, by all means. But don't wait for a stamp of approval to implement them.