I’ve managed various teams over the years and found that “outsourcing” decision making and problem solving to me to be one of the most consistent and frustrating bottlenecks to momentum.
“How do I do this?”
“What meeting cadence do you want?”
“When should I do this?”
“How do we fix it?”
Cue silent scream.
And to be fair, I was part of the problem. I didn’t push back enough. Sometimes it just felt easier and quicker to make the decision myself, but all that did was reinforce the habit and slow us down in the long run. I’d made myself the bottleneck.
A few weeks ago, I heard Leila Hormozi on a podcast articulating this challenge perfectly. She shared a simple, powerful framework for getting a team to think and decide for themselves, and I wanted to pass it on.
The biggest drag on a company's momentum is slow decision-making. Even in a culture of trust and “learning from mistakes”, people can still hesitate. Sometimes it’s fear of getting it wrong. Sometimes it’s just habit.
I had one brilliant team member. Still, his go-to move was to ask me for input the second a question popped into his head. I started repeating his question back to him and staying quiet. 98% of the time, he’d exclaim, “Never mind, I’ve worked it out”, visibly more confident and empowered.
The goal is to remove bottlenecks by building confident, capable decision makers in your team.
You can’t scale if you’re the only one allowed to think.
Step 1. Make it clear
Thinking is not optional; you've hired your team based on their ability to help make decisions. Explain that you want them to be making decisions. Empower them to take ownership and present their decision with a clear recommendation. If they don’t, you’ll send it back.
Yes, it feels uncomfortable the first few times, but it works. People stop defaulting to you. They get used to thinking for themselves. In the long term, they will grow faster and appreciate the trust.
Step 2. Get the right information
Start with the basics:
Step 3. Explore the options
Rarely is it just a yes or no. Most decisions are about trade-offs, especially as the business grows.
Step 4. Think about the risks
This part gets skipped too often.
Step 5. Ask a colleague first
Before bringing it to you, ask them to run the logic past someone else.
Then, when they do bring it to you, come with: “Here’s the situation, here are the options I considered, and this is what I recommend.”, not “What should I do?”
Step 6. Enforce it
This needs to be reinforced. Thinking is work and it’s easier to ask than it is to own. But if you let the outsourcing creep back in, you’re back to square one.
This will slow things down a bit at the start, but if you want a team that thinks like leaders, takes responsibility, and helps the business grow, this is the way. It’s not a one-time thing. You’ll need to revisit this at every growth stage and every time new people join. But the upside is huge.
You get your time back. Your team steps up. The business moves faster.
Because let’s be honest, you didn’t start a business (or step into leadership) to spend your days answering questions your team is perfectly capable of figuring out.
You should be working on the business, not firefighting inside it.