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If quotations, service credits and small purchases all wait for the founder, adding staff may not solve the bottleneck. Start by delegating one recurring, low-risk decision within written limits. Review exceptions and outcomes instead of approving every individual case in advance.
This operating model is designed for small businesses, platforms and service companies in Qatar and the Gulf. It does not replace statutory or contractual approvals. Its purpose is to tell employees what they can decide and what they must escalate before a customer is left waiting.
Measure the queue before changing authority
For one week, record the decision type, when a complete request arrived, when it was resolved, the actual review minutes and the outcome. Two hours waiting for a five-minute review is a different problem from two hours of analysis. The former may require clearer authority; the latter may need better information or training.
Track incomplete requests separately so missing information is not mislabelled as slow approval. Choose a frequent decision whose consequences are limited and reversible. Do not start with large contract changes or open-ended payment authority.
Write a six-field decision card
- Decision: for example, approving a service credit within an established policy.
- Owner: one accountable person or role.
- Limits: the amount ceiling, qualifying conditions and repeat-exception rules.
- Evidence: the order reference, reason and checks completed.
- Escalation: prohibited, repeated or high-impact cases.
- Review: a weekly sample alongside quality and cost measures.
Atlassian’s DACI framework distinguishes the driver, approver, contributors and people who should be informed. Its value here is role clarity. The financial limits and pilot design below are proposed management choices, not mandatory parts of that framework.
Worked example: recover capacity without inventing savings
Assume a founder reviews 40 recurring decisions each week, taking 12 minutes per decision. That consumes 480 minutes, or eight hours. If 30 cases qualify for delegation, ten remain for the founder, consuming 120 minutes. Add one hour for sample and exception review: total founder time becomes three hours instead of eight.
The five hours released are not automatically cash profit. Their value depends on redeployment into product development, sales or another important constraint. Team time may initially rise because of training. Record that effort, errors and service-credit costs before claiming a return.
Prevent exceptions from being split into smaller approvals
In a hypothetical maintenance business, a policy might permit an eligible service credit up to QAR 200, subject to a weekly aggregate ceiling and review of repeat requests from the same customer. These are teaching assumptions, not recommended financial limits or a Qatari market benchmark.
Several small exceptions can create a large commitment. Monitor aggregate value and repetition, not only individual amounts. Prohibit splitting a decision to stay below the threshold. Equally, avoid overruling a decision that followed the policy merely because you would have chosen differently. Review the outcome and improve the rule for future cases.
Run a two-week pilot with balanced measures
| Measure | What it reveals |
|---|---|
| Median and 90th-percentile decision time | Typical and slower-case performance |
| Decisions reopened | Resolution quality, not just speed |
| Exception value and repetition | Cumulative cost exposure |
| Founder and team hours | Improvement versus workload transfer |
Compare cases of similar type and complexity. Define stop conditions in advance, including authority breaches, missing evidence or a rise in consequential errors. Do not expand because the average improved while difficult requests remain unresolved.
The executive decision
Choose one decision, document its boundaries, train its owner and review results. For customer commitments, combine delegation with scope-change controls. Where exceptions consume service capacity, examine account cost-to-serve. The goal is a business that makes sound decisions when the founder is absent while keeping accountability clear.
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