Food for Thought
Why do I, as the boss, have to decide every little thing myself?
It often starts quite unremarkably. A customer exception is waiting for your approval, two employees ask about a priority, and without your answer an order remains on hold. You decide quickly so that things can move on. The next day, the next questions are on your desk.
Is that a sign that you lead particularly well? Perhaps. But it could also mean that the organisation cannot decide without you.
Three different explanations
Missing authority: Employees understand the task but are not allowed to decide. What is lacking then is not courage but clearly assigned responsibility.
Missing basis: The decision could be delegated, but information, criteria or consequences are not accessible to others. What is lacking then is a shared working context.
Missing trust: Perhaps you have formally handed over responsibility but step in again whenever someone takes a different route. That, too, is a possibility you can check, not a diagnosis of your personality.
There can equally be good reasons for central decisions: high risks, legal responsibility or rare exceptional situations. Not every question should be delegated.
The two-week test
Imagine you could not be reached for two weeks. Which work could carry on? Where would a decision actually be missing? And where are people waiting for you only because it has always been that way?
Take three real examples and note for each: What had to be decided? What information was needed? Who was allowed to decide? What consequences would a wrong decision have had?
Only then decide what should remain central and where others need clear guardrails. It is not about getting rid of responsibility. It is about distributing it deliberately.
What is established? That the work is waiting for your answer can be observed. What is a hypothesis? Why it is waiting. My position: Good leadership is not measured by whether everything stops when one person is absent, but by whether people can exercise their responsibility within understandable limits.
The more interesting question is therefore: Is it really me who is needed for this decision, or is something needed that we have not yet clarified?
Further thinking: From improvisation to a shared method and Collaboration and leadership.
Context: The two-week test is a practical aid to reflection, not a scientifically validated assessment. The causes described are possible explanations, not a statistical statement.