Everything waits on me. How do I stop being the bottleneck?
Decide which decisions others can make without you, write down the limits, and then let them make those decisions. Including the occasional one you would have made differently. A bottleneck is rarely about people being unable; it is that nothing tells them what they are allowed to decide.
List what comes to you in a week
Every question, approval and call that lands on you for a week. Most owners find the same dozen kinds of decision over and over. Those repeats are the ones to hand off first.
Give people limits, not tasks
“Approve anything under five hundred dollars.” “Reschedule any job by up to two days without asking.” A clear limit lets someone decide on their own and tells them exactly when to come to you. Without one, asking you is always the safe choice.
Accept a different answer
If you overturn the first few decisions someone makes, they stop making them. A decision that is fine but not the one you would have made is the cost of getting your time back, and usually a small one.
Write down how things are done
The answers you give over and over belong in a short written guide: how to quote this kind of job, what to do when a customer complains. It takes an afternoon and saves hundreds of interruptions.
Also asked
- What if they get it wrong?
- Some will, especially early. Set the limits so a wrong call is small and fixable, then widen them as trust builds.
- I am faster doing it myself. Why hand it off?
- You are faster this week. Every week after, the time is gone again. Teaching it once is the slower start and the faster year.
- How do I know which decisions to keep?
- Keep the ones that are rare, large or hard to undo: pricing strategy, hiring, big contracts. Hand off the frequent and the reversible.
Related
Written for your trade
This is the kind of thing Solomon works through with owners using their own numbers. See how it works →