When the Leader Becomes the Bottleneck

When a leader becomes the bottleneck, it's usually not a problem initially. As the team grows, the leader finds themselves in various roles such as architect, escalation point, and the one who resolves production issues. Decisions are made quickly because there's only one person involved, and they have clear priorities. However, as the team expands, the leader is faced with approving hires, vendor selections, architecture changes, releases, and pricing experiments.

As the leader's attention is occupied by these tasks, their ability to effectively manage the team diminishes. This is especially true for technical leaders who have hands-on experience, as they can quickly identify bad tradeoffs. The symptoms of being a bottleneck include a reactive calendar with mostly approvals, work stalls when the leader travels or takes time off, senior people waiting for the leader's opinion, and a sense of being busy without making strategic progress.

Despite this, the leader may not be a bad leader; it often means the company has outgrown the decision-making model. Leaders hold on to decision-making because they care about quality, want to ensure quality, and sometimes due to habit. However, quality should not translate into reviewing every decision. The goal is to delegate decisions that don't require the leader's judgment.

There are three buckets to categorize decisions: those that need the leader's input, those that should be delegated with guardrails, and those that should be decided once as policy. By implementing a decision map and defining guardrails, the leader can reduce the number of decisions that require their judgment and free up time for more strategic work.