If you run a growing business, you probably know the feeling. You walk back in after a morning out and there’s a queue: three people at your door, a dozen emails marked urgent, and a quote that has been waiting since yesterday for your say-so.
It feels like proof you’re needed. In reality it’s often the biggest thing holding the business back, because the business can only move as fast as you can answer.
Why it happens
In the early years, the owner making every call is a strength. You know every customer, every price and every supplier. The trouble is that the habit outlives the business it suited. Somewhere around 10 to 20 staff, the number of decisions grows faster than one person can handle, but nobody ever sits down and moves them.
Step 1: Write down what comes to you for a week
For one week, keep a simple list of every question or decision that lands with you. Don’t sort it, just capture it. Voice notes are fine.
At the end of the week, paste the list into your AI assistant and ask it to sort them.
“Here is every decision that came to me this week. Group them into types, count how many of each, and for each type say whether it needs me, could be decided by someone else with clear rules, or could be avoided altogether.”
Most owners are surprised by the answer. A large share of what reaches them is the same handful of questions, asked again and again.
Step 2: Turn the repeat questions into rules
For each repeat decision, write down the rule you already use in your head. When can a discount be given, and how much? Who can approve overtime? When does a complaint need you, and when can it be settled with a credit?
This is where AI saves real time. Talk through how you decide, and let it write the rule up as a short, clear guide.
“I’m going to explain how I decide whether to give a customer a discount. Turn what I say into a simple one-page rule a sales administrator could follow, with examples, and list any situations where they should still check with me.”
Step 3: Give each type of decision an owner
A rule without an owner just moves the queue somewhere else. Name one person for each type of decision, tell the team, and agree how they’ll let you know what they decided. A short weekly summary is usually enough.
Step 4: Make the information come to you, not the questions
Once others are deciding, you need to see what’s happening without being asked. This is where a simple weekly report earns its keep: sales, margin, cash, complaints and anything unusual, on one page, built the same way every week. AI can pull that together from your exports so nobody spends Monday morning building it.
What to keep for yourself
Not everything should be handed over. Keep the decisions that shape the business: pricing strategy, key hires, your biggest customers and where the money goes. The aim isn’t to step away. It’s to spend your time on the decisions only you can make.
A typical example
Take an owner who spends an hour a day answering repeat questions from the team. That’s five hours a week. If clear rules and named owners take half of those questions off their desk, that’s two and a half hours a week back, or around 120 hours a year. Swap in your own numbers.
Moving decisions is simple to describe and hard to stick to, especially when it’s your own business. That’s the part we help with. We’re not IT people. We’ve sat in the MD’s chair and built the systems behind it, and we’ll talk to you in plain business terms.
Growing pains like this are normal in a business that has grown quickly, and they’re fixable. Take the free Growing Pains Check to see where your business stands in three minutes, or book a free call about a Growing Pains Diagnostic: half a day with you and your business, then a written 90-day plan with the three changes that matter most.
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