There is a stage in every founder-led business where the thing that made it work starts to hold it back: you, personally, in the middle of everything.
It rarely feels like a problem. It feels like commitment. But when a team has learned to wait for your input, the business can only move as fast as you can read messages.
The fix is not simply delegating tasks. It is transferring outcomes. A task handed over still returns to you for judgement; an outcome handed over comes with the authority to decide.
Start with the decisions you make most often and care about least. Write down the rule you already apply intuitively, hand it to someone with the authority to apply it, and review the results weekly rather than approving each one.
Within a quarter, most founders we work with recover a full day a week — and the team gets sharper, because judgement is a muscle that only grows with use.