Decisions waiting on you

What decisions are stuck waiting on me?

To stop being your team’s bottleneck, find the decisions and approvals sitting in your queue and ask, for each one, whether the person closest to the work could make it instead. This preset surfaces what’s waiting on you every Wednesday so you can push the call down rather than holding it up. Turn the Ship Around calls this giving control: authority should move to where the information already is, which is rarely your desk.

What this is for

Every decision routed through you is a small tax on everyone waiting for it. Individually each one feels like leadership – you’re the one who signs off – but in aggregate they turn you into a queue, and the work stalls at exactly the rate you can clear it. The people closest to the problem, who often understand it better than you do, learn to stop and wait instead of acting.

The Decisions waiting on you preset makes that pile visible. It surfaces the approvals and decisions that appear to be stuck on you specifically, notes who’s affected, and asks the question David Marquet built a whole command philosophy around: could this be pushed back to the person doing the work? Most weeks, the honest answer for several of them is yes.

Who should use this

Founders and senior leaders who’ve become a chokepoint without meaning to. You’ll see exactly where work is queuing on your approval.

Managers trying to delegate more but unsure what’s safe to hand off. You’ll get a concrete weekly list of candidates.

Anyone whose team waits on them more than they’d like. You’ll turn standing bottlenecks into deliberate hand-offs.

The prompt

Surface the decisions, approvals, and blockers that appear to be waiting on me specifically. For each, note who's affected and whether it's something I could delegate or push back to the person closest to the work.

How to use

Click here to create a new Echo using this preset. You'll be able to customize the prompt and schedule before it starts generating answers.