Why Founders Need Clear Decision Rights and Exit Rules During a Crisis

A crisis can justify pulling decisions closer to the top. The harder leadership test comes later: returning those decisions to the people who owned them before the pressure hit. Without a clear exit condition, a short-term fix can become a lasting bottleneck, and employees learn to seek approval instead of bringing judgment.

That pattern followed a key hire’s mid-project departure. The company’s leader took back three routine calls—pricing exceptions, vendor changes and weekly staffing—“just until we stabilize.” The acute crunch lasted about ten days; the habit remained for months. Employees stopped bringing recommendations and started bringing questions. The shift signaled that decision-making had moved back to the leader’s desk.

Christopher Myers, who runs B:Side Capital and teaches management and entrepreneurship at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, says he sees a similar dynamic across restaurants, contractors, clinics and software companies. Under pressure, an owner can become the company’s decision system. Unless someone specifies when that temporary arrangement ends, it can become the default.

Centralizing authority may be sensible when time is short, information is incomplete and decisions affect one another. The risk is leaving the change undefined. Myers cites Gallup research finding that employees whose managers involve them in setting goals were nearly four times more likely to be engaged than others; only 30% of employees experience that involvement. When difficult calls routinely rise to one desk, employees have fewer chances to take part in decisions.

Make recurring decisions someone’s job

Start by listing decisions that recur each week, then assign an owner to each. The list might include pricing exceptions, hiring offers within a set range, vendor changes below a spending limit, schedule swaps or customer make-goods. For every call, specify who decides, what trade-offs are allowed and when the issue must be escalated. A goal without a named decision owner leaves people guessing about who can act.

Myers describes confronting this problem at BodeTree, where exceptions kept landing in his inbox. The pattern, he says, reflected a concentration of judgment that he had mistaken for leadership. His point is that decision rights belong inside a company’s strategy: plans only translate into action when people know which calls they can make without asking.

A practical first pass is to map five recurring decisions and put a person’s name beside each. If the same leader owns four, that concentration may constrain the organization’s ability to grow. A restaurant might discover that one person controls menu specials, vendor credits and Saturday staffing. At a software company, discounting, large customer renewals and production access could all depend on one person. The specific decisions vary; the value comes from making ownership visible.

Pair authority with escalation rules

Delegating a decision also means explaining when to bring it back for help. People need room to act within the assignment, as well as a clear route for situations that exceed it. An escalation rule should spell out what triggers a handoff, how quickly a response is expected and what information the person should provide. Without those details, employees may either exceed their mandate or send every difficult call upward.

Useful triggers can be stated plainly: act within the agreed range, but escalate if the risk changes, the decision conflicts with its purpose, spending passes the limit or another team needs the same scarce resource. The manager can make the boundary concrete: “You own this up to X. Escalate when Y. Bring the context, not just the question.” A regional manager, billing lead or shift supervisor can work within that kind of defined authority.

One unresolved decision can help expose a weak spot in the system: the recurring issue that always climbs the chain because nobody knows who owns it. Clarifying that gap gives the team a chance to improve the decision framework while the stakes are manageable.

Set a return condition when taking control

When a leader pulls a decision back during a crisis, the handoff should include a condition for giving it back. That condition could be a date, restored team capacity, a specified risk level or a reliable flow of information that no longer requires the leader’s review. A review should consider what employees have actually had the chance to decide. If they have been denied practice, their lack of recent experience isn’t evidence that they can’t handle the work.

Waiting until things “feel normal” is a weak test. There may be no clean return to normal, and a leader who has grown used to control may keep the decision by default. Returning it requires a conscious choice to trust judgment that has had less room to develop.

Myers recommends reviewing every decision reclaimed in the last quarter under the rationale of stabilizing the business. For each one, write down what would justify handing it back and who must explain if it remains with the leader. A retailer could return seasonal purchasing to a buyer; a professional-services firm could restore staffing decisions to a team lead. The business can keep its ambition while setting a date or condition that prevents temporary centralization from becoming permanent by inertia.

A focused review this week can cover five recurring decisions, their named owners, the conditions for escalation and a dated return condition for every temporary pull-up still in place. Saying the return path out loud makes the arrangement clear to the people sharing the work and its risks. The response employees bring—recommendations or requests for approval—can show whether judgment is finding its way back into the team.