The decisions that always come back to the owner

Delegating decisions means giving your employees the right to settle, on their own and by written rules, the questions that land on your desk every week: prices, discounts, purchases, schedules, complaints. Those decisions come back to the owner out of habit, not necessity. Handing them off frees your calendar and shows a buyer the business runs without you.

The decisions that always come back

In almost every founder-built small business, the same families of decisions end up on the boss's desk:

• Prices and discounts. The client asks for 5% off: the sales rep calls you.
• Spending. A tool, a part, a subcontractor: everything waits for your signature, whatever the amount.
• Staff. A shift swap, a leave request, overtime.
• Unhappy clients. A complaint, a credit, rework.
• Exceptions. Anything out of the ordinary, even slightly.

Each one takes a few minutes. Together, they fill your days and make you the owner bottleneck of your own business. Spotting them is part of step 2 of the path.

Why they come back

If your employees are capable, why do they call you? Rarely for lack of judgment. Almost always for one of these reasons:

1. There's no rule. Nobody knows how far they can go, so they ask.
2. There's no clear authority. The rule may exist, but nobody has been named to apply it.
3. Last time, you reversed the decision. An employee who had a decision taken away once won't make it alone again.
4. You like being asked. That's human. Being consulted keeps you at the heart of the business.

The fourth reason is the hardest to admit, and often the most important. A buyer will see only one thing: a business where nothing gets decided without you.

The three levels of delegation

Delegating isn't all or nothing. For each decision, pick one of three levels:

• Level 1: propose, I decide. The employee prepares the decision with a recommendation. You settle it. Useful for training.
• Level 2: decide, tell me. The employee decides alone and lets you know in a weekly report. This is the target level for most routine decisions.
• Level 3: decide alone. You only hear about it if there's a problem.

A decision can start at level 1 and move to level 2 after a few months. What matters is that the level is written down and everyone knows it.

The delegation grid to fill in this week

Make a table with five columns, one row per decision:

• The decision: "grant a discount," "approve a purchase."
• Who decides: a name or a position.
• Up to what limit: an amount, a percentage, a duration.
• The level: 1, 2 or 3.
• Who is informed, and when: you, every Friday; the controller, every month.

To fill in the grid, go back to the week's list of interruptions if you've done your owner task inventory. If not, keep a sheet on your desk for five days and write down every approval request.

Once the grid is written, post it, explain it at a team meeting, and give it three months before judging it. It will become part of your roles and responsibilities.

A roofer who takes back his calendar

Picture a commercial roofing contractor in Quebec City, invented for this example: $9 million in revenue, 45 employees, contracts with general contractors and property managers. The founder, 63, still approves every change order, every off-order material purchase and every credit given to a client.

He fills in his grid in one evening. It lists about twenty recurring decisions. He hands off half of them the following month: change orders below a set amount to the project manager, at level 2; routine purchases to the foreman, at level 3; client credits under a ceiling to the controller, at level 2. He keeps the quotes for large projects, but has his estimator prepare them first, at level 1.

For the first few weeks, his phone still rings. Each time, he answers: "What does the grid say?" After three months, the calls have dropped noticeably, and his Friday report shows him everything that was decided without him. The numbers are fictional; the pace is realistic.

Three mistakes that put it all back on your desk

Any one of these three mistakes can undo a delegation grid:

1. Delegating without a limit. "Handle it" isn't a rule. With no amount and no ceiling, the employee hesitates, or goes too far. Either way, the decision comes back to you.
2. Delegating the task, not the decision. If the employee prepares everything but still needs your sign-off, nothing has changed from a buyer's point of view: you're still the checkpoint.
3. Taking it back at the first difference. The employee will sometimes make a different call than you would. If they stayed within the rule, let it stand. If the rule was wrong, change it in writing, for everyone.

One last tip: don't forget the decisions your key employees make. If everything now goes to your controller instead of to you, the bottleneck has just moved to another office. See key employee dependency. And if you haven't yet, take the two-week test to see which decisions still stop when you're away.

What it changes next

Written decision rules are the foundation to systemize your business. Add a dashboard that shows results every week, and you no longer need to approve things to know what's going on. That's exactly what a buyer wants to find.

Keep the grid alive. Review it every quarter with the people who use it: which limits were too tight, which decisions keep coming back anyway, which new ones have appeared. A grid that changes with the business is one a buyer can trust, because it shows the rules are actually used.

Do it with a pro

Alone, owners often delegate too little, or too fast, then take everything back at the first misstep. With us and our regional partner, the delegation grid is built with your team, limits are set according to real risk, and the rollout is followed until the rules hold. See how it works.

Owner independence