Write down which recurring decisions a manager owns, the boundaries they work within and the exceptions that need escalation. Give them the information needed to act, and review outcomes without requiring approval for every ordinary choice.
For a UK founder with 20–50 employees, begin with one decision that repeatedly returns to you. A job title or responsibility list does not necessarily answer who has authority to decide.
Use the free Seven-Day Decision Handover Plan's fillable worksheet and worked example to agree one recurring decision, its owner and when to escalate.
Start with three fields: the decision, the named owner and the escalation conditions. Add the information required, applicable limits and how you will review the result.
Choose a specific recurring decision, such as agreeing a delivery change within confirmed capacity. Who decides, who contributes and who supplies the information? When several teams are involved, name who resolves a conflict.
Responsibility names the work or outcome someone owns. Decision rights state which choices they can make, within which limits. If a manager owns delivery but needs your permission for every routine schedule change, those two things are still separated.
A delegation of authority matrix records these permissions across roles and decision types. Begin with one recurring decision before mapping the whole business. The free Plan is a worksheet for that first handover, rather than a company-wide authority matrix.
Decision: offer a revised delivery date to an existing customer.
Owner: the customer-service manager. Operations supplies confirmed capacity before a date is offered.
Can decide: offer an available slot within existing price, scope and customer commitments, with the customer's agreement.
Escalate: a capacity conflict, disputed commitment or change outside existing commercial authority. Name the person who resolves each exception before using the agreement.
Information: the current schedule, agreed scope and relevant customer commitments.
Review: after the first suitable case, check whether the customer received an answer, commitments were kept and routine approval still came back to the founder.
Illustrative starting point, not a client result or a grant of authority. Replace every field with the roles, obligations and limits agreed in your business. If no suitable case occurs, test the agreement when one does.
Use the business's existing obligations, margins, capacity and authority when agreeing limits. There is no universal spending amount or contract duration that makes a decision appropriate.
Illustrative example, not a client result: a customer-service manager may agree a revised delivery date when capacity is confirmed and the customer accepts it. They escalate a commitment the team cannot meet, a disputed agreement or a recurring service failure beyond their remit.
Walk through realistic situations together. If two people interpret the same rule differently, clarify it before relying on it.
Check whether the manager can see what the founder knows: the customer commitment, available capacity, relevant costs and competing priorities. Make gaps in that information visible.
If capability is missing, provide support and state any temporary restriction on authority. A written decision agreement does not remove the need for sound judgement.
When someone acts reasonably within the agreed limits, support their ownership even if you would have chosen differently. Review what happened and improve the agreement when it exposes a gap.
Intervene when a genuine exception requires it. Explain any change to the boundaries, so the team can distinguish an exceptional intervention from a return to asking permission for everything.
Tell the wider team who owns the decision. Otherwise people may bypass the manager and continue going directly to the founder.
At the review, examine which routine decisions still reached you, whether exceptions were recognised and whether the information was reliable. Compare against the same starting measures.
Keep the agreement usable. The useful outcome is a manager able to make responsible decisions with clear visibility into exceptions, rather than a document that has never been tested.
Use the fillable worksheet and worked example to agree one recurring decision, its owner and escalation conditions.
Related guidance on outcome ownership, authority, measures and a management rhythm.