Leading Faster When Everything Feels Urgent
If you’re running a business today, you already know how the decisions pile up – quotes waiting for sign-off, variations you “just need to check”, staff issues, compliance dramas, clients chasing “a quick answer”. Some days it feels less like work and more like standing beside a conveyor belt of choices, all demanding attention at once.
What I see, especially in small and mid-sized businesses, is that the owner (or a handful of senior employees) quietly becomes the answer to everything. Over time that means slow progress, exhausted leaders, frustrated teams – and opportunities that quietly disappear.
The fix usually isn’t more hours. It’s being clearer about how decisions get made.
1. Not every decision is life or death
A simple starting point: not every decision deserves the same time and theatre.
When I’m working with a business, I tend to sort decisions into three rough piles:
Big directional calls Decisions that shift the trajectory of the business – stepping into a new market, repositioning who you serve, restructuring the business, taking on a major strategic partner or committing to a large, long-term project.
Business-shaping calls Choices that tune how the business performs – adjusting your pricing model, redefining roles, bringing in a senior leader, locking in key suppliers, upgrading core systems or equipment that change how work gets done.
Everyday operational calls The day-to-day decisions that keep things moving – approving small variations, handling credits and discounts, juggling rosters, resolving minor customer issues, swapping suppliers on like-for-like items, and figuring out short-term work-arounds on site or in the office.
The problem? In a lot of businesses everything quietly slides into pile 1 and lands on the owner’s desk.
A useful exercise: look back over the last week and be honest with yourself:
Which decisions really needed you?
Which ones could have been handled by a supervisor, a coordinator, or covered by a simple rule?
Once you start pushing everyday decisions down to the right level, you immediately create more space and headroom for the calls that genuinely need your attention.
2. Decide who decides what (instead of making it up each time)
Most businesses have a long list of decisions where the unofficial rule is: “We’ll just see what happens when it comes up.”
That’s exactly where delays creep in.
It works better when you design the decision flow in plain English:
For each recurring decision, write down:
Who makes the final call?
Who do they need to speak to first (if anyone)?
What’s the dollar limit or risk limit before it must be escalated?
Examples:
Site supervisors can approve variations up to $1,500 within standard rules.
The office manager can approve payment plans up to three months.
Anything outside those lines goes back to the owner.
Once that’s clear – and written down – people stop guessing. They stop sending “just checking” emails about issues they’re perfectly capable of resolving.
You don’t need a 40-page policy manual to start. One simple page of boundaries can make a big difference.
3. Want speed? Stop hoarding decisions
You can’t ask your team to be proactive and then insist on signing off everything they do.
Real empowerment is much more practical than that. It’s giving people authority within clear limits.
That might sound like:
“Within these limits, you decide. You don’t need to ask me.”
“Here’s the checklist – if it passes, go ahead.”
“If you’re 80% sure and it’s under $X, make the call and let me know afterwards.”
Will people get it wrong sometimes? Of course.
But if they make a call in good faith, using the information and rules you’ve given them, that’s a chance to coach and refine – not to whack them for trying.
And over time two things happen:
Your people grow.
You stop being the bottleneck.
Hard to complain about either of those.
4. Make everyday meetings actually decide something
You don’t need a formal board meeting to waste time. A toolbox talk or weekly catch-up can chew through just as many hours if nothing is actually decided.
If a “decision” keeps bouncing around inboxes or coming back to the same meeting over and over, you don’t have a decision problem – you’ve got a meeting problem.
For any meeting that’s supposed to land a decision, try this:
Start with: “Today we’re deciding whether to… [approve X / change Y / go ahead with Z].”
Come with a short summary, not a 40-slide data dump.
Be clear about who owns the final call.
Finish with three lines written down: What we decided Why we decided it Who is doing what by when.
If you can’t capture those three lines, you didn’t make a decision – you just had a conversation.
5. Aim for “good enough to move”, not “perfect when it’s too late”
One of the biggest handbrakes on decisions is the quiet belief that we need to be 100% certain before we act.
Real life and business rarely gives you that luxury.
Most operational decisions don’t need perfection. They need to be good enough to move, with a clear plan to adjust if things don’t play out as expected.
Before you push a decision into next week (again), ask:
Do we have enough information to make a sensible call?
What’s the real downside if we’re wrong – and can we cap it?
How quickly will we know if it was the wrong call, and can we correct course?
If the downside is small and reversible, sitting on your hands is often riskier than making a solid, timely decision and learning from it.
Where to start
If this all sounds familiar, don’t try to rebuild your whole decision-making system in one hit.
Pick three simple steps:
Choose one decision you’re forever being dragged into (minor credits, small variations, non-urgent leave approvals – whatever it is for you).
Set the rules and limits so someone else can handle it.
Stick with that arrangement for the next 30 days.
Once that’s working, move on to the next decision type.
You can’t switch off urgency – that’s business. But you can build a way of working where:
decisions sit at the right level
meetings actually decide things
and you spend more of your time leading the business instead of firefighting every small issue.
That’s how you get your day back – and give your team room to step up.