The company grows. The decisions stay with the founder.

A founder-led company that has grown from a small team to a few dozen people, with production or services across several sites. The founder built the company decision by decision and remained the point everything passes through. The scenario is illustrative: it describes a type of situation, not a client.

The symptoms need no interpretation: prices and discounts are approved one by one, exceptions to payment terms go up to the founder, and a hire already in the budget waits for a signal from them. Meetings are postponed until they reply.

The effect is twofold: the founder works in operations, and the people who should be deciding lose the habit of doing so.

This is not a diagnosis, these are hypotheses to check. The roles were described through responsibilities, not through decisions. The limits were never put in figures, so everyone asks to be safe. There is a history of reversed decisions, and people have learned that asking is cheaper. Or the information a decision rests on does not reach the person who should be deciding.

Hiring a director does not solve this by itself. A new title without written limits reproduces the same approval route.

You pick three recurring decisions — the ones that required the most approvals over the past two months, not the ones that matter most in principle. For each, four things get written down: who decides, within what limit they decide alone, from what threshold they escalate, and to whom.

The rest stays explicitly with the founder: investments above a set ceiling, hires outside the approved budget, partnerships and changes of strategy. What stays at the top matters as much as what moves down.

Commercial discount: the sales lead decides alone within the approved discount limit and on standard payment terms. Above the limit or outside those terms, they escalate — with the client history and the reason for the request, not just the figure. The rule fits in one paragraph and is told to the team once, clearly.

For one week, write down every approval you were asked for: who asked, what they asked, what you decided and how long it took. That list is the raw material for the three decisions to delegate — and usually fewer things repeat than it seems.

The time from request to approval, how many decisions come back to the founder after being delegated, and how many exceptions appear against the written limits. These are process indicators: they show whether the rule is being applied, not that the business is doing better.

Does this sound familiar?

Tell us which decisions come up to you most often and we will tell you where we would start.

Working with managers on delegation and feedback is described in Training & Leadership Development.