The Signal

You’re overwhelmed. Not from doing too much, but from deciding too much.

Some days it feels like your brain is actually melting.

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Your team asks for your input on everything from vendor selection to pricing tweaks to copy edits. You jump in because it’s faster, you know the context and you can’t afford mistakes.

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That might have worked at the beginning... but it’s not faster anymore.

You’ve become the bottleneck.

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Projects slow down waiting for your approval.

The team hesitates because they haven’t built the muscle of deciding without you.

What should be forward motion turns into decision drag as every initiative stalls in the pipeline.

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That's why it feels like you can never get enough done. There's no end to the things that go through you.

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The Pattern

When the founder is still holding every decision,

it’s not a capacity problem, it’s a scaffolding problem.

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In scale-up mode, the business outgrows the founder’s mental bandwidth long before it outgrows their vision.

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The team wants to take ownership, but can’t, until the founder defines which decisions they can make independently, and when they need to escalate.

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Until those parameters are defined, you’re dealing with:

• Blurry ownership: Everyone’s “responsible,” but no one’s accountable.
• Reactive decision flow: The team waits for problems to arise before deciding so by the time it bubbles up to you, the need is urgent and reactive.
• Control disguised as care: You can’t ever fully let go so you end up micromanaging at the expense of your time and their confidence.

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This isn’t about trust. It’s about structure.

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The Tool: The Decision Cascade

The Decision Cascade is a four-level framework to right-size your decision-making role.

The goal is for you work your way up the levels until you are only making the decisions that only you can make and for decisions to work their way down the levels to be made by the appropriate owners in the organization.

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Level 1: Vision Decisions

The highest level calls that define who you are and where you’re going, like mission, long-term vision, brand promise, core values and purpose.

Owner: Founder or CEO, with leadership input.

Escalation Trigger: These decisions can’t escalate. They are yours to own.

Constant revision usually means you’re seeking certainty where you need conviction.

Get clear on the Why behind your direction and then make it crystal clear to your team.

Level Check:

If it impacts the next one to five years, not the next quarter, consider it Vision-level.

Honor this space; it’s the part of your role no one else can fill.

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Level 2: Strategic Decisions

Directional calls about where to focus resources and why, like growth priorities, pricing strategy, product line expansion, hiring plans and partnership choices.

Owner: The leadership team, with your thought partnership (informed by their recommendations).

Escalation Trigger: Escalate only when trade-offs touch multiple departments or meaningfully shift the growth trajectory.

Level Check: If the decision changes your allocation of people, money or attention for more than a quarter, think of it as Strategic. This is where you belong most often: steering, not signing off.

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Level 3: Operational Decisions

Process-oriented choices that determine how work gets done, like launch timelines, cross-functional coordination, process design, vendor contracts or workload balancing.

Owner: Department leads or functional managers.

Escalation Trigger: Escalate only when the decision impacts capacity, cost structure or inter-team dependencies.

Level Check: If it affects how the system runs but not what the system is aiming for, it’s an Operational call.

If you’re still the default approver here, you’re clogging throughput. Delegate to your department heads.

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Level 4: Execution Decisions

Real-time, tactical calls that keep daily work moving, like what tool to use, how to message a customer, which vendor to pick. These are short-cycle, reversible and low-risk.

Owner: Team members closest to the work.

Escalation Trigger: Only escalate if the decision has material impact on budget, brand or the timeline of a strategic initiative.

Level Check: If the impact is short-term and the cost of a wrong call is minimal, it belongs here.

If it still lands on your desk, you’re being asked to play the roll of traffic controller, not leader. Decline to make the decision and instead support the appropriate owner in understanding it’s theirs and how to approach it.

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The Fix

Start by mapping your Decision Cascade: how decisions enter, move through and get resolved in your business.

The goal is to create flow so decisions are made where they belong, and there are no dams forming at the door of your office or in your inbox.

• List five to ten decisions you made this week. Label each as Level 1 - Vision, Level 2 - Strategy, Level 3 - Operations or Level 4 - Execution.

→ If more than 30% are Level 3 or 4, you’re clogging the system, and giving your team a pass.

• For every Level 3 or 4 decision, define who should make it next time and when/if it should escalate back to you.

→ Don’t just delegate outcomes, delegate criteria. Document what success looks like, what the tradeoff criteria are, what thresholds require your input and what’s fully autonomous.

Clarity beats speed here. The more explicit and thoughtful the hand-off, the smoother the future flow.

• Add a “Decision Review” to your quarterly leadership rhythm:

1. Which decisions escalated unnecessarily?
2. Which ones can now move lower in the cascade?
3. Where did flow slow down or reverse?

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Your goal with this exercise isn’t to make fewer decisions (although that will be the outcome).

It’s to make higher-quality decisions at the right altitude, while your team carries momentum through the rest.

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Why It Works

Most founders think decision bottlenecks are about capacity, but they’re really about flow.

A healthy Decision Cascade creates three things:

• Clarity of ownership. Everyone knows which calls are theirs, what success looks like and when to loop you in.
• Conservation of energy. You protect your cognitive bandwidth for decisions that shape direction, not those that manage motion.
• Organizational rhythm. Work moves through the system instead of stacking up at the top.

When decisions flow cleanly through the cascade, your team gains confidence, execution speeds up and your leadership energy stays focused where it creates the most leverage.

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Taking the time to build this layer of scaffolding around your team won’t slow you down,

it gives your team the current it needs to move around you, not just through you.

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Your Turn

What percent of decisions you’ve made in the past week are Level 3s and 4s?

You can tell me — I won’t judge.

But I will try to help.

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If you’re still at the center of every decision, it’s time to install a new operating rhythm for your team.

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Start by building your Decision Cascade this week, or book a Signal Session and we’ll map it together.

You don’t need to do more. You need to do less — and decide less — better.

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