Change authority and escalation

Put bounded decision rights close to the people who have the information and feel the consequences.

Every discount over 5% needs your sign-off. You are the founder, three time zones away, and each approval waits an average of two days, during which deals cool and reps stop bothering to ask. The people closest to the customer have the information; the person farthest away has the authority.

Change authority and escalation puts bounded decision rights close to the people who have the information and feel the consequences. The cue: decisions queuing behind a distant approver while the people on the ground could act, or the mirror case, decisions made locally by people insulated from their fallout. Steps: identify who actually holds the relevant information and bears the results (the reps); delegate a bounded right, discounts up to 15% on standard terms, decided on the spot; define the escalation trigger precisely, so anything outside the bound comes to you with context; then audit outcomes periodically instead of pre-approving each case. The visible change: two-day waits become same-hour decisions, deal velocity rises, and your queue shrinks to the genuinely unusual cases. The discipline lives in the bounds: authority without limits or feedback is abdication, so don't delegate decisions whose failure is irreversible or whose consequences land on someone other than the decider.