Okay. So the third reason why most people struggle with having this self managed team, this team who is able to own their shiz, go get things done and not, um, require constantly going back to you for clarification is decision making authority. So I see it a lot when leaders hold most of the decision making authority, it forces your team to constantly have to come back to you because they're waiting for approvals.
They're looking for a sign off and it's delaying their progress in order to actually own what they're doing. It's impossible for your team to own their work. If every five steps, they have to come to you and wait for a sign off. It's just not possible. We actually have to push decision making down into our team so they are able to move forward without us.
But for a lot of you guys, that is terrifying. You're like, there is no way my team will be able to make a decision without me having to be involved. Like, I just don't trust them to be able to make decisions aligned with our strategy and continue to move forward. Or maybe you think that you have empowered your team to make decisions, but I want to challenge you if we've given them surface level decision rights, where sure they can make basic decisions, but truly most of the power resides with you or they're allowed to make the initial decision, but they still have to come to you for approval.
And in that case, you may completely override them altogether. Can't tell you how many times I've been doing focus groups with teams and they're like, I'm told I'm able to make the decision. But in reality, every time I do it gets overrided because I was, I wasn't in the room and I didn't have the information to make this decision or whatever the reason that right there completely disempowers your team and shuts them down from feeling like they have true ownership over their work.
So when it comes to decision making. Y'all, I'm about like, this is going to be a masterclass. Um, here we go. How I want you to do this is I want you to actually get your team in a room because as you guys know, when we actually include our team into the process, when we do things with them, not to them, they're more likely to own the outcome.
Teams own solutions they helped create. So what we're going to do is we're going to bring our team into the room. And we are going to lay out the top three to five buckets of work that our team executes on, on a day to day basis. So I always like to say, if your relative asked you what you do all day, like this is that level of detail.
It's the highest level you can get that like any Joe Schmo off the street will understand. So write down your three to five buckets of work on individual flip charts across a whiteboard on a virtual whiteboard like Mural or Miro. And what I want you to do is divide your team up into pairs, or you can have one person per, um, flip chart.
Give them a pad of sticky notes, and I want you to ask them, what are all the decisions that we need to make when it comes to this bucket of work? We're not getting into the nitty gritty onesie twosie, but like, what are the major decisions that moves work forward in this bucket? And have them write down one per sticky note, those major decisions, then have them rotate around to the next board until they've gone through all three to five buckets.
Now you have just done in like, 15, 20 minutes max, a decision audit, you know, have a complete picture of all of the major decisions that need to happen within your team. The next thing we need to do is figure out who should own these. So what I like to do is for each bucket, I assign a team to each bucket.
And I have them draw a horizontal line across it. And I want you to picture this line as a waterline. So you have above the waterline or above the line and below the waterline. Now anything above the waterline, we want to place decisions here that if we make the wrong decision, it is not going to cause irreversible harm to our team.
Sure it might cause discomfort. Sure it might be a pain in your butt to fix it. Sure it might throw you off track, but it's not the Irreversible harm. You can turn around, step back through that door and change course. Anything, and that's just like a boat. So think about a boat on that waterline. If you damage the boat above the waterline, the boat can still survive.
It can still float. It might not be efficient. It might not be pretty, but it can still float. Now, anything below the waterline, those are decisions that If you made the wrong decision, it is going to cause irreversible harm to your team and how they operate. Like, it's going to be impossible for you to change course on that.
Like, it will be destructive. Just like to a boat, if I punch a hole in a boat below the waterline, that boat is probably going to sink. So, I want you to draw that line and have your team put things either above the waterline, or below the waterline. or below the waterline. So above the waterline, decisions that are not irreversible, or that are irreversible, below the waterline are things that are not.
And from there, we are going to talk about who needs to decide on each single one. Because here's the other thing that happens is your team doesn't understand who gets to make what decision. And so they're all spending more time talking amongst each other, trying to figure out who gets to decide and how and who needs to be included.
And they're wasting more time trying to decide who gets to decide than actually deciding and driving work forward. So we need to get clear about who at the end of the day gets to make that decision and how that decision is made. Anything below the waterline that is irreversible, um, that is going to be something that you as the leader. Either decide or you're going to do with, um, decision rights, like sign off rights on that decision.
Like your team will own and you'll have sign off rights. Anything above the waterline that is not irreversible damage. Those are decisions you're going to delegate. So I want you to look at those decisions above the waterline and say, what is the lowest level That I can delegate this decision down to, because here's the thing, we want that decision to be made at the lowest level possible, because that is how we're able to move quickly.
Every time that we have to wait on a higher level individual or leader to make a decision, it prevents me from moving forward on my work. And that slows me down. That It is called bureaucracy and we have so much of it running rampant in today's corporate culture and it is radically slowing down our team and eating away at our team's capacity like charm bits.
So I really want to challenge you those decisions above the waterline. How can we delegate them down to the lowest possible level? Who on your team is closest to the work and has the information to make that decision. And for some of you guys, you're like, well, they don't, they're not in the meetings because they don't have the title.
I have to be in those meetings. So they don't have the information. I'm calling BS. How can we get them in the meetings? How can we get them a seat at the table? Because otherwise you're just playing adult version of corporate telephone. And let me tell you, that is a sure fire way to screw things up because I don't know if you played telephone in a while, but it doesn't work very well.
And if your team member is having to constantly, um, send messages up to you for you to go sit in a meeting and then try and remember and send those messages down to your teammate. Of course, your team is inefficient. Of course, they're not able to own their work. They don't have the information they need to do so.
So if your only excuse is, well, they don't have a seat in that meeting or they're not on that email, that is a superficial barrier that we need to tackle. That is not a good enough excuse to say you need to make that decision. So look at those decisions above the waterline and say, how can I delegate to this lower level?
This is the lowest level possible. I'm going to challenge you even further. If there are decisions where you're like, Oh my gosh, there's just no way I can delegate that, that is terrifying. Then you are going to put a boundary around it. You will delegate the decision, but with a boundary. So what I mean by that is, maybe you don't need, like, it is too terrifying for you to delegate, um, your team making any investment without you.
So right now every investment, um, has to come through, every budget request has to come through you. How can we put a boundary that is irreversible? So like, yes, anything over 5, 000 has to come to me for approval, but anything under 5, My team can do like, if you are sitting there, like if you're a lower level leader and you're sitting there looking at expense reports that are like 5 charges, not a good, like your salary and the time you're wasting on doing that is more of a negative impact on your company then simply allowing that 5 Starbucks charge to roll on through. Like we've put the authority, the structure in the wrong place. So look at those decisions up above and say, can I actually delegate this with a boundary? And then I want you to do the same things for those below the waterline. Is there a boundary I can put on these decisions that makes it Irreversible.
And we're going to put that boundary on it. And then we're going to move it above the waterline and assign it to someone on your team. So that way the decisions below the waterline across all the buckets should be few. It should be the decisions that could cause massive damage or absolutely require your expertise.
And now we have actually empowered our team to own their decisions. And we as leaders have freed up our time and mental capacity to focus our attention on the decisions that actually require our attention, the decisions that are actually could make or break our team. Okay, I feel like I've given you a lot to go execute on right there, so I'm going to stop there.
If you guys want me to continue this episode on decision making and start talking about how we make decisions, um, and thinking through, uh, Um, decisions that require approvals and, um, joint decision making and things like that. DM me over on Instagram and I will do a part two. Um, as always, if you want more simple ways of working to actually pull you and your team out of the, um, overwhelm, overthinking, overworking and radically simplify every single thing your team does.
You need to be inside liberated leader. I'm going to drop that link in the show notes below. Otherwise I want you guys to take something you learned from this episode today and go apply it and then DM me and let me know how it went or what questions you have.
