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A CEO at his laptop while two team members hand him stacks of paper marked Can you decide and Just checking (again), under a whiteboard that says stop delegating up

Why does my team keep bringing me decisions they should own?

Your team keeps handing decisions back up. Here's why it happens, and how to give the next move back.

The work that kept coming back up

When I was a COO, I noticed something odd about my week. Work I had handed to people was quietly finding its way back onto my desk.

It wasn't laziness. Often it was the opposite. Someone had a task that needed a decision or a conversation with a senior executive, and they didn't feel they could have it. Too junior. Not their place. Not worthy of that person's time. So they brought it back to me, to have the conversation for them.

Each time, it felt like a small favour. Together, they added up to a full plate, and a team that wasn't growing.

In the end I had to say it plainly: stop delegating up.

Why do people hand decisions back up?

Most CEOs assume it's a capability problem: people can't make the call. In my experience it's usually something else. They can make the call, but something tells them it isn't theirs to make.

In purpose-driven organisations I see a few reasons come up again and again:

  • They're not sure what matters most. If the priorities aren't clear, every decision feels risky, so it's safer to check.
  • They don't feel senior enough. Talking to a board member, a CEO or another executive feels above their pay grade, so they ask you to do it.
  • They've learned it's quicker. If the CEO always steps in and fixes it, people stop trying.
  • The CEO cares, a lot. In a purpose-driven organisation, the leader often feels every decision personally, because the mission is personal. So they say yes when the work comes back, and the habit sets.

There's a quieter version too, and I've seen it more times than I can count. You give the team a direction, ask if everyone understood, and no one pipes up. Not because it was clear, but because asking feels disrespectful, or like admitting they weren't keeping up. So the conversation is literally one way. Then, after the meeting, they go to a colleague to check what you really meant, hoping they've understood, rather than getting it straight from you. The work goes ahead on a guess, and when it comes back wrong, it lands on your desk again.

None of these is about effort. They're about clarity and trust, which is good news, because both can be built.

What do the experts say?

The monkey on your back. In 1974, William Oncken Jr. and Donald Wass wrote a Harvard Business Review article called Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey? It became one of the magazine's best-selling reprints, and it's still passed around today. Their picture is simple. A "monkey" is the next move on a problem. A team member stops you in the corridor with an issue, you say "leave it with me, I'll get back to you", and the monkey has just jumped from their back onto yours. Do that a few times a day and, as Oncken put it, the manager ends up working for their own team. Their fix: hand the next move back, and agree when they'll come back to you with their recommendation, not their problem.

Here's what that sounds like in practice. Your finance manager catches you after a meeting: "The Chair of the Board wants the quarterly report a week early, and we won't have the numbers. What should I do?"

  • The monkey jumps: "Leave it with me, I'll call them." Now you're the one waiting on numbers and making the call, and they're waiting on you.
  • The monkey stays put: "Good catch. What do you think we should do?" If they're not sure: "Have a think about two options and which one you'd pick. Can you come back to me by Thursday with your recommendation?"

On Thursday they come back with a plan: send the Chair what's ready now, with the final figures to follow. You might tweak it, but it's their call to make, their conversation to have, and next time they won't need to stop you in the corridor at all.

Tell people the why, let them choose the how. Stephen Bungay's The Art of Action goes back to the 19th-century Prussian army, where Helmuth von Moltke found that detailed orders fell apart the moment they met reality. His answer, later called mission command, was to make sure everyone understood the intent: what we're trying to achieve and why. Then the people closest to the action decide how. Bungay shows the same idea works in organisations: the more people understand the intent, the less they need to ask.

Alignment and autonomy are not opposites. Henrik Kniberg, describing how Spotify's teams worked in 2014, drew this as a simple two-by-two. Most leaders think they have to trade one for the other: tight control, or freedom and chaos. Kniberg's point is that you can have both. The leader's job is to be clear on the problem to solve and why it matters. The team's job is to work out how.

Which quadrant is your team in?

Here's Kniberg's grid, in the words I use with leadership teams. Up means more alignment: everyone is clear on what matters and why. Right means more autonomy: people are trusted to decide how.

High alignment, low autonomy

Clear, but you are the bottleneck

Everyone knows what matters, but still comes to you to decide how.

High alignment, high autonomy

Aligned autonomy

You set the problem and why it matters. The team owns the how.

Low alignment, low autonomy

Firefighting

Nobody is clear what matters. Every decision lands on your desk.

Low alignment, high autonomy

Busy, but not moving

Lots of motion, little progress. People check in for reassurance.

When work keeps coming back to you, it helps to ask which side of the grid is the problem. If people don't know what matters, that's an alignment problem, and no amount of "just make the call" will fix it. If they know what matters but still check with you, that's an autonomy problem: a gap in trust or confidence. My team was in the top left. They knew what needed doing. What they didn't have was the permission, or the confidence, to go and do it themselves.

What does it look like when a purpose-driven organisation gets it right?

In 2006, a Dutch community nurse called Jos de Blok decided there had to be a better way. Home care had become a string of separate tasks, organised from above, with decisions made a long way from the person being cared for.

So he started Buurtzorg ("neighbourhood care") with a team of four nurses and one simple idea: trust the nurses. Small teams of up to 12 run their own patch, looking after 40 to 60 people in their area. They decide who to take on, how to plan care, and how to organise themselves. There are no team managers. The whole organisation, with around 900 teams, is supported by a back office of about 50 administrators and 20 trainers.

What holds it together is the intent. Everyone knows what they're there for: help people live as independently as they can, for as long as they can. Within that, the team closest to the patient decides how.

The results are striking. A KPMG case study found Buurtzorg clients needed around half the hours of care, because nurses could take the time to get things right and help people look after themselves. Staff satisfaction went up too.

You don't have to run a nursing network to learn from it. The lesson is the same one as in the grid above: be crystal clear on the why, then get out of the way of the how.

What can my leadership team do on Monday?

  1. Find out which quadrant you're in. Ask each person on your leadership team to place the team on the grid above, on their own, then compare. The gaps between your answers are the conversation.
  2. Write down the intent for your top three priorities. For each one: what are we trying to achieve, and why does it matter? If your team can't say it back in a sentence, that's your first job.
  3. Swap "any questions?" for "what did you hear?" After you give a direction, ask someone to play it back in their own words, then ask "which part is least clear?" That question assumes something is, which makes it safe to say so. It's the fastest way to stop the after-meeting huddle.
  4. Hand back the next move. When someone brings you a decision they should own, ask: "What do you recommend?" Then agree when they'll come back to you, with an answer, not a question. The monkey goes back to its owner.
  5. Lend your seniority, don't replace it. If people avoid a senior conversation because they feel too junior, don't have it for them. Introduce them, tell the other person they speak for you on this, and let them run it.
  6. Agree the limits. Be clear about what people can decide alone, what they decide and tell you about, and what genuinely needs you. Most teams have never had this conversation.

Why caring CEOs hold on too tight

Here's what I've noticed, sitting on both sides of the table. When a for-purpose CEO ends up as the bottleneck, it's rarely about control. It's about care. The mission matters so much that every decision feels important, and saying "I'll take that" feels like looking after people.

But every decision you take back is one your team doesn't get to make, and doesn't get better at. You stay busy, they stay small, and the organisation can only grow as fast as your diary allows.

Saying "stop delegating up" felt blunt at the time. It was actually the more caring thing to do. The habit started to change. I stopped letting the monkey jump onto my back, and asked people to come to me with their recommendations and solutions instead. I asked them to speak up, and not to be afraid to ask clarifying questions, of me or anyone else. Slowly, the work stopped flowing back up, and the team started to back themselves.

The numbers side of me sees the cost in capacity: your time is the most expensive in the building. The people side of me sees the cost in confidence. Fix both, and decisions start getting made where the work is.

Want help getting decisions off your desk?

If your week is full of decisions your team should own, let's talk. I work with leadership teams of purpose-driven organisations to get clear on the why, so your people can own the how.

Tell me about your organisation

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