The Bottleneck is You: How to Stop Being the Chief Decision Officer

You are sitting at dinner with your family. Your phone buzzes. It is a text from an employee. “Hey, the client wants to know if they can swap the blue widget for the red one. Is that okay?”

It is a simple question. The answer is yes. It takes you three seconds to type “Yes.” You put the phone down.

But the damage is done. You have been pulled out of the moment. Your brain has switched contexts. And more importantly, you have just reinforced a dangerous precedent. You have taught your team that they need your permission to make a $5 decision.

If you multiply this interaction by twenty times a day, across five different employees, you have the recipe for founder burnout. You are suffering from decision fatigue. Your brain is burning glucose at an unsustainable rate processing trivialities.

But the cost isn’t just your mental health. The cost is the speed of your business. When you are the bottleneck for every decision, your company can only move as fast as you can reply to texts.

We need to break the addiction to being the answer key. We need to build a system where your team is empowered to make decisions without you. We need to move from delegating tasks to delegating authority.

The Psychology of the Bottleneck

Why do we hoard decisions? Usually, it comes from a place of fear. We are afraid that if we let go, they will make the wrong choice. They will give away too much margin. They will offend a client.

This fear is rooted in a lack of frameworks. We haven’t taught them how to decide. We have only taught them what to do.

When an employee asks you a question, they are really asking, “What is the logic I should use here?” If you just give them the answer, you are robbing them of the lesson. You are keeping the logic inside your head.

To free yourself, you have to externalize the logic. You have to create “Guardrails” rather than “Gates.”

A Gate is a checkpoint where they must stop and wait for you to open it. A Guardrail is a boundary that keeps them safe while they keep moving.

The $500 Rule

The easiest way to start is with the financial guardrail. I call it the $500 Rule. (Or $100, or $1000, depending on your business size).

Tell your team: “If a problem can be solved for less than $500, and you believe it is the right thing to do for the customer, do it. Do not ask me. Just fix it.”

This is terrifying at first. You think they will spend all your money. They won’t. They will be incredibly careful because you have given them trust.

Think about the friction this removes. A customer has a complaint. Instead of the employee saying, “Let me check with my manager,” they say, “I can issue you a refund right now.” The customer is delighted. The problem is solved. You didn’t get a text at dinner.

You can review the decisions later. If they made a bad call, coach them on it. “Next time, try offering credit before cash.” That is coaching, not gating.

The Decision Matrix

For more complex decisions, you need a Decision Matrix. This is a simple framework that categorizes decisions based on risk and reversibility.

Type 1 Decisions: High Risk, Irreversible. (Signing a 5-year lease, firing a key executive). These must come to you.

Type 2 Decisions: Low Risk, Reversible. (Changing a social media caption, refunding a small order, trying a new software tool). These should never come to you.

Teach your team to identify the type. When they come to you with a Type 2 decision, do not answer it. Ask them, “Is this reversible?” If they say yes, say, “Then make the call.”

Over time, they stop coming. They realize that they have the autonomy to act on the low-risk stuff. This clears 80 percent of the noise from your inbox.

“I Intend To”

Captain David Marquet, a former nuclear submarine commander, popularized a phrase that changes leadership culture: “I intend to.”

In a traditional hierarchy, subordinates ask permission. “Captain, can I submerge the ship?”

In an empowered hierarchy, subordinates state intent. “Captain, I intend to submerge the ship.”

The difference is subtle but profound. When they state intent, they have already done the thinking. They have analyzed the situation and formulated a plan. Your job is simply to say “Very well.”

Train your team to use this language. If they send you a text asking, “What should we do?” reply with, “Tell me what you intend to do.”

This forces them to switch from passive consumers of orders to active creators of solutions. It builds their cognitive muscle. Eventually, they stop asking for permission entirely and just start informing you of their actions.

Pre-Mortems for Safety

To make yourself feel safer about letting go, implement the Pre-Mortem for big decisions.

Ask your team: “If you make this decision and it goes terribly wrong, what does that look like? And how would we fix it?”

When they can articulate the worst-case scenario and the recovery plan, your anxiety drops. You realize that even if they fail, it won’t be fatal. You realize that they have thought it through.

This allows you to say yes to risky ideas because the risk has been capped.

The Feedback Loop

Delegating authority does not mean abdicating responsibility. You still need to verify the quality of the decisions.

But do it asynchronously. Review a sample of support tickets once a week. Look at the refund log once a month.

When you see a great decision, celebrate it publicly. “I love how Sarah handled this difficult client. She made a call without asking me, and it saved the account.”

When you see a bad decision, treat it as a tuition payment. You paid a small cost to identify a gap in their training. Fix the training, not the person.

Your New Job Description

When you stop making every decision, you might feel a void. You might feel useless. “If they don’t need me to answer questions, what is my job?”

Your job is now Strategy. Your job is Culture. Your job is Growth.

You are no longer the quarterback throwing every pass. You are the coach designing the plays. You are looking at the horizon, not the ball.

This is a higher level of work. It is harder work. It requires deep thinking rather than rapid-fire reacting.

But it is the only work that will scale your business. You cannot scale your own brain. You can only scale the collective intelligence of your team.

So the next time your phone buzzes at dinner, don’t answer it. Let them figure it out. They are smarter than you think. And you need to eat.