Why every decision still comes back to you

In partnership with

You didn’t plan to become the bottleneck.

It happened slowly.

A decision here.
A quick approval there.
Stepping in because it was faster than explaining it.

Over time, something subtle changed.

Your leadership team stopped owning decisions
and started routing them.

Not because they’re incapable.
But because the system trained them to.

In growing service businesses, this is the default failure mode.

As complexity increases, decisions naturally compress upward.
Risk feels safer near the top.
Context lives with the founder.
Escalation becomes the path of least resistance.

What looks like involvement
is often approval debt accumulating quietly.

Here’s the cost most founders miss:

• Execution slows, even with strong people
• Senior leaders hesitate instead of deciding
• You become the exception handler for everything that matters
• Headcount grows, but leverage doesn’t

Nothing is “broken” enough to trigger alarm bells.
But nothing moves without you anymore.

That drag compounds.

Not as a crisis.
As friction.

Most founders try to solve this by being clearer, aligning more, or improving communication.

Those help.
But they don’t fix the core issue.

This is a decision architecture problem, not a motivation problem.

Until ownership is structurally explicit,
who decides what, at what threshold, without escalation,
the system will keep pulling decisions back to you.

This is why stepping away feels risky.
And why growth feels heavier than it should at this stage.

Here’s the diagnostic that matters:

If decisions above a certain level still require your approval, you don’t have empowered leaders.

You have delegated execution with centralised authority.

Most founders don’t see this until frustration spikes or momentum stalls.

By then, the pattern is already expensive.

—

Chris

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