Why So Much Decision-Making Still Reaches the Business Owner

When my clients first come to me for support, often it is because they are feeling overwhelmed by the pressure of running their business and feel like the business is running them, rather than the other way round.

The reality is that in many businesses, particularly those in professional services, the majority of pressure concentrates at the top of the business on the owner themselves. This is especially true of decision-making.

It is often the case that the managers, or team members themselves understand the client, the issue or have dealt with similar situations before. But still they bring the decision to the owner, and because it feels quicker than explaining their thinking, the owner answers the question and makes the decision.

But, as is most often the case, the next day another decision arrives across their desk (or email).

The business owner then feels frustrated, wondering:

• Why do they not just decide?
• Why am I still involved in this?
• What was the point of recruiting experienced people if everything still comes back to me?

Repeatedly escalating decisions back to the business owner doesn’t always mean the employee lacks initiative. It may mean the business has not made it clear where decisions should sit.

People are more likely to make thoughtful decisions when they understand what they own, what they can decide and when they genuinely need to involve someone else.

Escalation is not always a confidence problem

The scenario of repeated questions from the employee to the business owner is something that is experienced in many business within professional services especially.

It can though be misinterpreted by the business owner, they might assume that there is a lack of ability, or resistance by the employee to making decisions.

But there are many reasons that the team member may bring a decision upwards. It could be because:

• they don’t have access to all the relevant information
• previous decisions they have made have been corrected without explanation
• different leaders have responded inconsistently throughout their career
• the consequences of getting it wrong feel significant
• the client has learned to expect owner involvement
• the team are unclear whether they are seeking permission or perspective

What’s more, the boundaries for decision-making can often change whenever pressure rises in a business.

There is a difference between a team member not knowing what to do and knowing what they would do but not feeling safe to act. Similarly,they may already have an understanding of the issue but are looking for you to help because they need wider commercial context.

Or, there may be an indirect message that your team have picked up on, they might have learned that you as the owner prefer to make the final decision.

It is important to recognise here that this is not about apportioning  blame, I am instead demonstrating that an employee may be behaving rationally within the culture they have experienced.

For a closer look at what may be happening beneath that hesitation, read Why Your Team May Hesitate Even When They Know What to Do.

How decisions quietly move upwards

Decision-making is rarely moved to the owner because of one overtly expressed formal rule, instead decisions drift upwards because of the lessons that are learned from observing the repeated everyday interactions.

The owner gives the answer because it is quicker

In this scenario the employee brings a question to the business owner who sees the answer immediately.

Given the desire to offer a quality service and that there is often a sense that ‘time is money’, even if you are not pricing based purely on time, the owner makes the decision and tells the team member what to do.

This does mean that the ‘issue’ is resolved efficiently, which is what the intention most likely was, but this also means that the employee does not have the opportunity to develop the judgement needed to handle the next situation.

So, the short-term time saving creates a longer-term pattern.

Responsibility is delegated without decision-making freedom

In many professional service firms, the business owner will delegate responsibility to their team members for managing the clientr elationship.  This responsibility sounds like it will create ownership for the team member and reduce the pressure on the business owner.

The issue comes that most often when team members are allocated clients to be responsible for, this is most often meant in terms of producing the deliverables. They own the client, but they  can’t:

• agree a revised deadline
• discuss a fee adjustment
• respond to client dissatisfaction
• change how the work is delivered
• challenge unrealistic client expectations

Ask yourself: Do your team own the relationships, or are they simply administering it on your behalf?

The rules change under pressure

Business owners rarely recognise this important truth about the difference between intentions and what happens in the reality of running a business.

Many owners want to empower their team, and this can even happen in their business when things are calm. When everything feels more under control then the team is encouraged to make decisions.

But when one of these things happen:

• a deadline is close
• a valuable client complains
• an error is discovered
• cash flow is affected
• quality is questioned

Then the owner steps back in.

This means that the message the team receives is that their degree of ownership only applies when the decision is easy.

Leaders give mixed signals

This isn’t something that happens intentionally, but sometimes the team can pick up, and be confused by, mixed messages.

For example, sometimes they may hear the owner say “Use your judgement” when it comes to things like making judgements when preparing accounts. But then other times that same owner in a different situation might say “Why did you not check with me first?”.

Both send a very different message to the employee.

Another example that I have seen is that the owner delegates a task, such as writing a newsletter for their clients, and tells the employee “I want you to take ownership.”  The team member then goes away, creates something and sends it to the owner. Some time later, they receive the newsletter back from the owner, who has carefully gone through checking the content and has in some cases re-written sections completely.

People within a team become increasingly cautious when the spoken expectation and the experienced response do not match.

The cost of unnecessary escalation

When decisions are escalated to the owner unnecessarily there are costs to the business across three different levels.

Costs to the owner

• constant interruption – meaning focus is distracted and clarity slips
• decision fatigue – this can lead to situations being left un-handled
• reduced strategic thinking time – meaning the business is more reactive than proactive
• difficulty switching off – which has a negative impact on health, well-being and family
• frustration with the team – this can lead to friction and disharmony and less productivity
• feeling indispensable but also trapped – meaning the owner never gets to take a break

Costs to the employee

• reduced confidence of their own abilities
• slower development of their ability to use their judgement
• greater sense of frustration about their limited authority
• more heightened fear of being blamed
• productivity slips because they are waiting rather than acting
• increased feeling of responsibility for results they cannot fully influence

 Costs to the busines

• a bottleneck appears in the business because of waiting for approval
• slower client response times increasing the chances of client dissatisfaction
• there could even be an inconsistent client experience depending who ‘owns’ the client
• a difficulty developing future leaders in the business
• reduced capacity for sustainable growth
• increased dependence solely on the owner’s knowledge and presence

 When decisions continually rise to the owner, leadership pressure remains concentrated rather than shared.

What might this pattern be telling you?

When decisions continually return to you, it is easy to focus on the individual bringing them.

You might wonder whether they lack confidence, experience or initiative. But, as we have explored, the pattern may be telling you something wider about how responsibility and authority are understood within your business.

Your team may have learned that it is safer to check.

They may have responsibility for an outcome without thea uthority to make the decisions needed to achieve it.

Or they may have experienced that the rules change when pressure rises, making it difficult to know when their judgement will be trusted.

None of this necessarily means that you have an incapable team or that you have failed as a leader. Often, it simply means that the business has developed without anyone pausing to make its decision boundaries explicit.

Before encouraging people to “take more ownership”, it may therefore be helpful to notice:

• Which decisions repeatedly return to you?
• What happens when someone brings you a question?
• Does your response change when the situation feels pressured?
• Are people clear about when they need your approval and when they are simply seeking your perspective?

These questions can help you distinguish between a genuine capability gap and a lack of clarity about where a decision belongs.

In my next article, I will move from why this pattern develops to what you can do about it. I will share a simple four-level framework that can help you clarify which decisions employees can make independently, which require consultation and which genuinely need to be escalated.

For now, I will leave you with one question:

Which decision reached you this week that could reasonably have been made somewhere else?

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