People
When the owner becomes the bottleneck
The signs that decisions are piling up at one desk, and how to move them without losing control.
The habits that make a founder successful at twenty people make them a bottleneck at sixty. Every decision still passes through one desk, and the queue gets longer every month.
The signs
Emails that wait for a reply before anyone acts. Meetings that are rescheduled when the owner cannot make them. Managers who bring problems but not proposals.
What helps
Write down which decisions belong to whom, and stick to it for three months. Most owners find that very little goes wrong, and that they get their evenings back.
Amara Lewis
Managing partner
Amara co-founded Lodestar in 2011 after twelve years running operations for an engineering consulting firm. She leads our work with professional services firms.
