Decision Batching

I was on a call last week with an owner who runs a 40-person manufacturing company. Sharp guy. Built the thing from nothing.

He told me he answers questions from his team all day long. Literally all day. Someone needs a vendor approved. Someone needs a budget sign-off. Someone needs to know if they should hire a temp for the holiday rush.

He said, "I feel like a human help desk."

I asked him when he makes his real decisions. The ones about growth, positioning, the next hire that actually matters.

He paused. Then he said, "Honestly? I squeeze them in between the other stuff."

That's the problem.

Every interruption has a cost that goes beyond the time it takes to answer. It pulls you out of the thinking mode required to make good decisions. And most owners don't realize they're spending their sharpest mental hours on the lowest-stakes questions in the building.

Decision batching is simple. You designate specific windows for decisions that require your input, and you protect everything outside those windows. Your team learns to hold non-urgent questions. You learn to stop being available for everything, all the time.

What changes isn't just your schedule. What changes is the quality of your thinking when it actually counts.

The owners who scale their companies successfully are not faster decision-makers. They are more deliberate ones.

If every hour of your day is spoken for before you even sit down, what decisions are you actually making with intention?

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From "The Owner's Almanac" - 90 days to build a business that runs without you. Available on Amazon.