The cost of keeping every technology decision with the CIO

Being available to answer every question can look like good leadership. It can also make the whole team dependent on whether one person is between meetings.

If a routine supplier query, a configuration choice and a major investment all wait for the CIO, the problem is not just the length of the queue. People lose opportunities to exercise judgement, and decisions receive similar treatment despite having very different consequences.

I would start by examining which decisions wait, rather than telling the team to be more empowered. Authority needs a usable definition. Encouragement without boundaries can leave people responsible for outcomes they were never clearly allowed to choose.

Inspect a week of waiting

Ask the team to record decisions held for the leader during an ordinary week. Include the question, how long it waited and why it was escalated. Do not turn this into a performance measure for individual staff.

Look for repeated categories. Perhaps people need approval because a spending limit is unclear. Perhaps a previous decision was reversed without explanation. Perhaps the team lacks access to information the CIO assumes everyone knows.

Each cause needs a different response. A financial delegation can resolve one category. Sharing strategic context may resolve another. Where staff have learned that independent decisions are punished, a written delegation alone will not rebuild confidence.

Ask whether your involvement changed the outcome. If you routinely approve the team's recommendation without adding information, the approval step deserves scrutiny. If you frequently spot a consequential issue, identify the knowledge or check that would help someone else spot it too.

Delegate a class of decisions, not an isolated task

"You own the platform" is too broad to be useful. Describe what the owner may decide and the limits that apply.

A service owner might approve standard configuration changes within an agreed design, budget and change process. They might need consultation for changes affecting another service, and formal approval for an exception involving sensitive information. The distinction should be understandable without asking the CIO to interpret it each time.

Give people access to the context behind the limits. Explain the service commitments, risk tolerance and other teams affected. Delegation should include the ability to obtain advice, not force a person to choose alone.

Document who substitutes when the decision owner is unavailable. Otherwise the organisation simply creates a smaller version of the original bottleneck. The substitute needs the same access to information and a clear account of any limits on temporary authority.

Judge reversibility alongside consequence

A reversible decision with a contained effect can usually tolerate a different approval approach from a difficult-to-reverse commitment affecting the whole business. Neither reversibility nor price should be the only test.

In a fictional example, a team lead can trial a new dashboard layout with a small group and restore the previous version if it does not help. A change to how customer records are matched may be technically reversible but still create confusing communications or incorrect downstream records. Its consequence is broader.

I would ask the decision owner to consider who is affected, how failure would be detected and what reversal actually requires. A rollback plan is weak if it assumes data can simply be put back after other systems have acted on it.

Use that assessment to define consultation and escalation thresholds. Avoid escalating every unfamiliar choice. Newness may call for peer review or a small test rather than executive permission.

Make exceptions fast without making them casual

Some situations need an urgent decision outside normal authority. Define a route before the incident or deadline arrives.

Specify who can authorise an exception, the minimum information they need and how long the exception lasts. Record the reason and any temporary safeguards. Review it afterwards without pretending that urgency removed the consequence.

For routine escalation, require a recommendation where the person has enough expertise to offer one. A short note can describe the options, uncertainty and preferred choice. This helps develop judgement and makes the leader's intervention more focused.

Do not insist on a recommendation from someone reporting a concern beyond their competence. They should be able to raise a credible risk without designing the answer. Risk ownership should distinguish the person who notices an issue from the person authorised to accept its consequences.

Review the quality of decisions without taking them back

Delegation needs feedback. Sample decisions and discuss the reasoning, information available and result. Avoid judging a reasonable decision solely by whether an uncertain outcome happened to go badly.

If a boundary was unclear, fix it. If someone lacked a skill, provide support. If the decision breached a clear requirement, address that directly. These are different problems and should not all result in authority returning to the CIO.

When you disagree with a decision that was within the delegated remit, explain your concern and consider whether intervention is necessary. Reversing every preference difference teaches the team that authority is conditional on guessing your taste.

This is closely connected to leading a team out of firefighting. A leader who remains the approval point for ordinary work cannot reliably protect time for longer-term choices.

The first useful measure may be modest: fewer decisions waiting for one person, with enough records to see that the boundaries are working. Keep the decisions that genuinely need your authority. Give the others a dependable home where the work happens.