The Leadership Bottleneck: Why Every Decision Falls on You
Many leaders—especially in fast-moving teams—feel like they have to be involved in every decision. Their teams struggle to make independent choices that align with the company’s direction, leading to bottlenecked decision-making and unintentional micromanagement.
Why does this happen? Typically:
- Teams lack a shared framework for decision-making. Individuals may have different values, priorities, and risk tolerances.
- Company values exist but don’t translate into real-world behaviors. Many organizations go through a core values exercise, but the results often end up as fluffy, abstract ideals that don’t impact day-to-day work.
- Decisions are inconsistent. Without a clear system, decisions are made ad hoc, sometimes prioritizing speed over quality, transparency over autonomy, or vice versa—without an explicit agreement on when and why.
The result? Leaders are forced into a reactive role, constantly clarifying, course-correcting, and approving decisions that teams could be handling themselves.
The Solution: Core Values as a Decision-Making System
Instead of being the bottleneck, leaders need to empower their teams with a system for making decisions that align with company and team values. This system ensures:
- Decisions are made consistently without needing leader approval.
- Teams understand priorities and trade-offs in different situations.
- Values translate into behaviors, so they become practical tools rather than abstract ideals.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Values are just leadership fluff – something we post on the wall and forget about”. That’s only because we fail to make them actionable and tie them to the real day-to-day lives of our employees. This system fixes all that, by connecting them to the ground level and giving a crystal clear system for decision making.
Below, we’ll walk through how to define core values, translate them into decision-making principles, and embed them into actionable daily operations.
Step 1: Identifying and Defining Core Values
Before a team can align around values, the leader must first clarify what values actually mean in the team’s context.
Exercise: Identifying Core Values
To identify core values, ask yourself:
- What do you reward and recognize in your team?
- What behaviors frustrate you the most? (These often point to values that aren’t being upheld.)
- What trade-offs are you consistently making? (E.g., “We always choose speed over perfection.”)
- What behaviors lead to success in your company?
- What are the non-negotiables? (What must always be upheld, no matter the context?)
Example: A Tech Leader’s Core Values Let’s say a leader identifies these four values:
- Quality – We strive for excellence in everything we build.
- Speed – We move fast and iterate quickly.
- Transparency – We communicate openly and share knowledge freely.
- Autonomy – We empower individuals to own decisions and outcomes.
Each value must be defined clearly so the team knows exactly what it means in practice.
Step 2: Translating Values Into Decision-Making Principles
Values can sometimes contradict each other (e.g., Quality vs. Speed). To prevent confusion, we prioritize and contextualize them.
Example: Prioritizing Core Values
- Quality > Speed when launching a core infrastructure update.
- Speed > Quality when experimenting with a new feature in a limited beta.
- Transparency > Autonomy when making decisions that affect the entire organization.
- Autonomy > Transparency when a team needs to move fast without waiting for consensus.
Example: Making Decisions Using Core Values
Imagine a product team needs to decide:
- Should we ship an MVP quickly or take extra time for polish?
→ Answer: If the priority is Speed, release the MVP. If Quality is more critical, delay and refine. - Should we let engineers push code to production without approval?
→ Answer: If Autonomy is the priority, yes. If Quality is a concern, require a review process.
By explicitly outlining when to prioritize each value, teams gain clarity without constant leader involvement.
Step 3: Aligning Team and Company Values
Before embedding values into daily work, teams should do their own core values exercise to see how their personal and professional priorities align with the company.
Exercise: Team Core Values Alignment
Each team member identifies:
- What values matter most to them in their work?
- How do those values align with (or contradict) company values?
Example:
- A product designer values creativity, but the company prioritizes speed.
- A backend engineer values stability, but the company prioritizes autonomy (fast deployments without reviews).
Rather than forcing alignment, the team discusses these contradictions and agrees on how to balance them.
Step 4: The Alignment Exercise
Now that core values are defined, teams must make them actionable. We do this by identifying good and bad behaviors related to each core value within the context of the team.
Exercise: Identifying Good and Bad Behaviors
For each core value, list:
- Behaviors that reinforce the value.
- Behaviors that contradict the value.
- Principles & Commitments the team will add to the Team Charter.
Here are concrete examples for each of the core values we chose:
Autonomy
✅ Aligned Behavior:
- Engineers have full access to deploy their own code after peer review.
- Product managers make prioritization decisions without needing leadership approval for every feature.
- Designers can ship minor UI updates without requiring extensive sign-offs.
❌ Misaligned Behavior:
- Every major decision must go through a committee, leading to delays.
- Engineers require managerial approval to push even minor bug fixes.
- Designers can’t test new UX ideas without full stakeholder alignment.
📝 Principles & Commitments:
- We trust individuals to make informed decisions within their areas of expertise.
- We minimize unnecessary approvals while ensuring accountability for outcomes.
- We empower teams with the access and information they need to move fast.
Transparency
✅ Aligned Behavior:
- Product teams share decision-making rationale openly.
- Engineers document technical trade-offs and make decisions visible.
- Designers post UX updates in a shared Slack channel for discussion.
❌ Misaligned Behavior:
- Product changes are made without explaining why to the engineering team.
- Engineers fix bugs but don’t log them, creating knowledge gaps.
- Designers silo feedback, leading to misalignment across teams.
📝 Principles & Commitments:
- We communicate decisions, risks, and rationales proactively.
- We default to open discussions rather than private conversations.
- We ensure that critical knowledge is shared, not locked away in individual minds.
Quality
✅ Aligned Behavior:
- Engineers prioritize writing tests and maintaining clean code.
- Product managers push back on rushing features that aren’t ready.
- Designers conduct user testing before rolling out significant UX changes.
❌ Misaligned Behavior:
- Engineers cut corners to hit a deadline, leading to tech debt.
- Product managers release features without validating customer impact.
- Designers prioritize aesthetics over usability.
📝 Principles & Commitments:
- We prioritize long-term maintainability over short-term speed.
- We validate major decisions with real-world usage and feedback.
- We hold ourselves to high standards but recognize when ‘good enough’ is appropriate.
Speed
✅ Aligned Behavior:
- Engineers release MVPs quickly and iterate based on user feedback.
- Product managers focus on delivering incremental value rather than perfecting features before launch.
- Designers test multiple versions of a UI quickly rather than over-researching.
❌ Misaligned Behavior:
- Engineers over-optimize code before knowing if a feature will be used.
- Product managers delay releases to add “just one more feature.”
- Designers spend too much time polishing mockups without user validation.
📝 Principles & Commitments:
- We optimize for learning and iteration rather than perfection.
- We bias toward action and quickly adapt based on new insights.
- We move fast while balancing risk and impact.
Step 5: Codifying Values Into a Team Charter
Once behaviors are defined, they are codified into a team charter, which serves as a shared agreement on how decisions are made.
Outline of a Team Charter
- Core Values – Clearly defined and prioritized.
- Good & Bad Behaviors – Real-world examples of alignment vs. misalignment.
- Principles & Commitments – Concrete statements that clarify how decisions will be made, such as:
- We will ship fast when quality is not mission-critical.
- We will default to transparency in all decisions affecting the team.
This document becomes a living reference that guides everyday decisions.
Step 6: Using Values for Feedback, Recognition, and Performance Management
This is where the framework becomes real—how leaders and teams use it every day to shape decision-making, performance management, and culture.
Using Core Values in Meetings
- Retrospectives: Use core values as a lens for analyzing past work.
- Example prompt: Did we balance speed vs. quality effectively? Where did we lean too much in one direction?
- Sprint Planning: Ask how upcoming work aligns with values.
- Example prompt: How does this prioritize transparency and autonomy?
- Standups & Check-Ins: Reinforce commitments to values.
- Example: “I saw great transparency in how we documented our tech debt last sprint—let’s keep that up!”
Using Core Values in One-on-One Feedback
When giving feedback, always tie it to values.
- Recognizing good behavior:
- “I really appreciated how you prioritized transparency by explaining the trade-offs in our last meeting—it helped everyone align faster.”
- Addressing misalignment:
- “When you bypassed peer reviews, it compromised our commitment to quality. How can we balance speed with quality better next time?”
Using Core Values in Performance Reviews
Performance reviews should explicitly evaluate how well team members demonstrate core values in their work.
- Example evaluation rubric:
- ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Consistently embodies core values and reinforces them in the team.
- ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Frequently aligns with core values but has room for improvement.
- ⭐⭐⭐ – Sometimes aligns but needs more consistency.
- ⭐⭐ – Occasionally misaligned, requires improvement.
- ⭐ – Frequently misaligned, impacting team effectiveness.
Public Recognition & Reinforcement
Leaders should publicly reinforce values to make them cultural norms.
- Core Value Call-Outs:
- In team meetings or all-hands, recognize individuals who exemplify values.
- Example: “Shout-out to Alex for embodying autonomy by taking ownership of the incident response and resolving it without needing approvals!”
- Team Awards & Incentives:
- Some companies tie bonuses or promotions to living core values.
- Example: A quarterly “Values Champion” award, where peers nominate colleagues who best embody team principles.
Conclusion: Leadership Without Micromanagement
By embedding values into a decision-making framework, leaders shift from being approvers to being enablers.
This system:
✅ Eliminates decision bottlenecks
✅ Empowers teams with autonomy
✅ Creates consistency in decision-making
✅ Reduces micromanagement
Values are only useful if they are lived daily—and with this framework, they become a powerful tool for leadership and team alignment.
🚀 Founders: Stop Being the Bottleneck! 🚀
If you’re constantly pulled into decisions your team should be making, it’s time to fix the root problem: a lack of clear, actionable core values.
I help founders define, communicate, and lead with core values so their teams can make decisions with confidence, take ownership, and move fast—without constant oversight.
Let’s build a leadership framework that scales with your company. Book a call now and take the first step toward a team that’s aligned, empowered, and high-performing.