Find why routine decisions keep returning to you, assign clear decision rights and escalation limits, and release approvals without losing control.
Short answer: Everything reaches you because the business has tasks but no explicit decision rights: people do not know the acceptable result, spending limit, risk boundary or exception route. List the 30 most recent approval requests, create rules for the repeated low-risk decisions, and let the responsible person act without asking inside those limits. Keep owner approval for irreversible, regulated or high-value exceptions.
Telling people to “use their initiative” does not grant authority. If you later reverse an ordinary decision or criticise an honest choice made without a rule, asking you first becomes rational.
Approval feels like control because you see each choice. In practice, it hides slow work, trains dependency and makes your attention part of every lead time.
> Jurisdiction note: You can delegate operational decisions, but applicable legal duties, regulated approvals, director responsibilities, employment obligations, insurance conditions and contractual commitments may limit who can decide or sign. Requirements vary by country and sector. Obtain qualified local advice for material authority changes.
Use the Decision-Right Release Zones
The Decision-Right Release Zones are a four-zone framework for recurring choices. Put each decision in one zone, name the role and define the evidence required.
- Own: Person's authority: Decide, act and record; Suitable decisions: Reversible, frequent work inside an agreed standard and limit; Owner involvement: Review results later
- Act and inform: Person's authority: Decide immediately, then notify; Suitable decisions: Time-sensitive issue within a defined loss or customer boundary; Owner involvement: See the record within a set time
- Consult: Person's authority: Recommend with facts, then wait; Suitable decisions: Novel, moderately costly or cross-functional choice; Owner involvement: Decide within an agreed response window
- Escalate: Person's authority: Stop and transfer control; Suitable decisions: Safety, suspected fraud, legal threat, protected commitment or loss beyond limit; Owner involvement: Take over or appoint a specialist
My position is that “owner approves everything” is not a prudent early-stage policy once another competent person performs recurring work. Control should come from standards, limits, records and review. Approval should be the exception.
Audit what actually reaches you
For two working weeks, record every approval request before answering it. Capture who asked, decision needed, amount or consequence, information provided, wait time and your answer.
At the end, group requests by decision, not by person. Five staff members asking whether to replace damaged packaging represent one missing rule. Do not solve it with five coaching conversations.
Classify the cause:
- No standard: Evidence: Your answer changes according to unstated judgement; Structural fix: Define acceptable outcome and examples
- No limit: Evidence: Person can act, but does not know how much risk or money is allowed; Structural fix: Set value, time and consequence boundaries
- No information: Evidence: Decision-maker cannot see margin, schedule, history or customer promise; Structural fix: Provide required facts at the decision point
- No authority: Evidence: Process says “manager approval” for routine work; Structural fix: Assign a named role and zone
- Punished initiative: Evidence: Past decisions were reversed without a prior rule; Structural fix: Honour decisions inside the boundary and coach afterwards
- Capability gap: Evidence: Person lacks training or experience for the decision; Structural fix: Teach, observe and release gradually
If requests are all genuinely novel, you may not have an approval problem. More often, the same decision appears in different clothing.
Define an outcome and three limits
For each repeated decision, write the acceptable result plus three limits:
- Value limit: maximum spend, refund, discount or exposure.
- Time limit: how far a date, schedule or response may move.
- Consequence limit: conditions that make the decision unsafe, regulated, irreversible or strategically important.
“You may buy replacement materials up to £150 from an approved supplier when the purchase keeps the job inside its quoted direct-cost allowance” is stronger than “small purchases are fine”. It combines money, purpose and margin.
Avoid one universal spending limit. £300 for standard timber on a £9,000 confirmed job may be routine. A £60 recurring subscription can create a lasting commitment. Write limits by decision type.
Include the evidence expected after action: purchase reference, reason, customer message, schedule change or quality result. The record enables review without making approval a prerequisite.
Release authority in measured stages
Start with high-frequency, reversible decisions. Give the person five live cases in the Own zone while you review results after completion. Do not secretly re-approve them in advance.
If outcomes meet the standard, extend the review interval or raise the boundary. If one fails, decide whether the cause was missing information, unclear rule or weak capability. Correct that cause. Pulling every decision back to yourself teaches that release was temporary theatre.
For Act and inform decisions, set a notification window such as before the end of the working day. The person should not wait for an acknowledgement. If you routinely intervene after the action, the zone is really Consult and should be labelled honestly.
Set your response time for Consult decisions. A request that waits 36 hours for a five-minute answer still makes you the bottleneck. If you cannot meet the window, appoint another decision-maker or move more cases into a released zone.
Worked example: Stonebridge Exhibition Builds
Stonebridge designs and installs exhibition stands. Over one week, the owner logs 64 approval requests. Forty-six concern routine material substitutions, supplier collections and schedule movements already inside the customer quote.
Each request takes about four minutes to read and decide. The owner estimates another six minutes to recover the interrupted estimating work. This is a business-specific working assumption, not a productivity benchmark.
Time spent on routine approvals = 46 × (4 + 6) minutes = 460 minutes, or 7.67 hours.
At an internal opportunity value of £48 per estimating hour: 7.67 × £48 = £368.16 per week.
- Substitute a standard board finish: Own-zone boundary: Same fire and finish specification, no more than £150 extra, job margin remains above quoted floor; Evidence after action: Supplier, cost and job reference
- Move an installation slot: Own-zone boundary: Maximum two hours, site contact confirms access; Evidence after action: Revised schedule and confirmation
- Replace damaged transport packaging: Own-zone boundary: Up to £80 from an approved source; Evidence after action: Photograph and purchase record
During a four-week pilot, one released choice requires £96 of correction. The internal value of time released is 4 × £368.16 = £1,472.64. Subtracting the observed £96 correction leaves £1,376.64 of net internal value, provided the owner uses the time for estimating work worth the stated rate.
Stonebridge keeps structural changes, safety issues, unquoted recurring commitments and customer concessions above £150 in Consult or Escalate. The framework does not remove judgement. It moves ordinary judgement to the work.
Review decisions without reclaiming them
Hold a 30-minute weekly review for the first month. Sample completed decisions from each released category and compare the evidence with the standard.
Ask four questions:
- Was the decision inside the stated limits?
- Did it produce the required result?
- Was the record sufficient to understand it later?
- Does the rule need changing because reality differed?
Do not grade whether the employee made the exact choice you would have made. Two choices can both be acceptable. Review against the published boundary.
Track exceptions. If the same escalation happens three times, either add a decision rule or accept that the work belongs at a higher authority level. Repetition is evidence that the exception is becoming normal.
Share the cost of decisions as well as mistakes. If someone saves £120 through a sensible substitution, record that alongside the £40 correction. A review that discusses only errors will drive requests back to you.
Related guides
Release three decisions this week
Today, collect the last 30 approval requests from messages, meetings and memory. Group them and choose the three most frequent reversible decisions.
Within two days, define the outcome, value, time and consequence limits, then assign a role and zone. Release five live cases for each decision without pre-approval. Review the evidence at the end of the week and correct the rule or training. After two clean weeks, expand one boundary. Keep a visible list of the decisions that remain exclusively yours and explain why.
Frequently asked questions
Why do people still ask me after I have delegated the decision?
Because delegation may have transferred the task without making the authority credible. Check whether the person knows the limits, has the information and believes you will support a reasonable choice. Answering every request immediately rewards the old behaviour.
Refer the person to the rule and ask them to decide when the case is inside it. If the request exposes an ambiguity, improve the boundary. Also examine your reactions: reversing acceptable decisions, demanding to be copied into every message or criticising style rather than outcome teaches people that permission is still required.
How should I choose a spending approval limit?
Set it by decision type, available margin, reversibility and cumulative exposure, not by picking one round number for the whole business. Review recent purchases and find the range where choices were routine and recoverable.
Add controls for recurring commitments and multiple transactions, so five £90 purchases cannot bypass a £300 project boundary. State whether the limit includes tax, delivery and related costs. Start lower for an untested decision-maker and raise it after evidence. A qualified accountant or lawyer should review material financial authorities and banking mandates.
What if an employee makes a bad decision inside the boundary?
Own the system first, correct the customer or operational consequence, then review the decision against the information and rule available at the time. If the boundary was unclear, fix it. If capability was missing, train and retest.
If the person knowingly ignored a clear limit, handle that as a performance issue under your applicable employment processes. Do not withdraw every released decision after one honest error. Price corrections against the owner time and delays saved across all cases. Authority cannot develop if only perfect decisions are tolerated.
Should a new employee have any decision authority?
Yes, but begin with narrow, reversible choices tied to observed competence. During training, explain the outcome and limits, let the person recommend a decision, then compare reasoning before moving it into Own. Increase authority by category rather than tenure alone.
A new hire with deep technical experience may handle a specialist judgement sooner than a long-serving colleague outside that field. Keep safety, regulated and high-loss exceptions with the properly qualified role. The aim is not immediate autonomy everywhere. It is a visible path from observation to trusted decision rights.
How do I delegate decisions involving important customers?
Delegate defined remedies and schedule choices before delegating the entire relationship. Give the responsible person the customer's current commitments, commercial context, acceptable outcome and value limit. For example, they may correct an evidenced service failure up to £100 and move delivery by one working day, while contract changes remain Consult.
Require a prompt record of what was promised. Tell the customer who can decide routine matters so they do not bypass the role. Keep strategic negotiation and commitments beyond the boundary with the appropriately senior person.
Can approval software solve this problem?
It can route and record decisions, but it cannot decide which approvals are necessary or create trust in delegated judgement. Automating a bad rule may make the bottleneck faster to observe while preserving it. First remove approvals that add no control, define the remaining boundaries and set response owners.
Then choose a system only if volume, audit needs or access controls justify it. Keep an alternative for urgent work if the system is unavailable. The operating design should remain understandable without depending on a particular product's features.
How often should decision rights be reviewed?
Review new releases weekly for the first month, then monthly until outcomes are stable. Revisit immediately after a serious error, role change, new regulation, major customer commitment or increase in transaction size. A full quarterly review is a useful working rhythm for a young business, but higher-risk sectors may need tighter governance.
Examine both escalations and decisions made without asking. Remove obsolete authority when roles change and confirm access follows the written rights. Do not let a historic limit remain simply because nobody remembers why it was set.
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