Who Decides What

Most founders think hiring globally gives them access to better talent. They're right. But they miss what happens next. Every new time zone adds a layer of complexity that silence turns into chaos. Your team stops asking questions. Decisions get delayed. Handoffs break. You wake up to problems that should have been solved two time zones ago.

The cost isn't just inefficiency. It's trust. When your distributed team can't move forward without you, you've built a bottleneck, not a business.

Distributed teams don't fail because of distance. They fail because of unclear decision rights.

Most founders try to solve this with more meetings. That's the wrong move. What you need is a simple framework I call Decision Layers.

Here's how it works:

Layer 1: Autonomous Decisions Tasks your team can execute without approval. Examples: responding to customer inquiries, scheduling internal meetings, updating project status.

Layer 2: Collaborative Decisions Issues that need input but not permission. Examples: choosing between two vendor options, adjusting a timeline, reallocating budget within a project.

Layer 3: Executive Decisions Strategic moves that require your sign-off. Examples: new market entry, major hires, shifts in company direction.

The problem in most distributed companies? Everything defaults to Layer 3. Your team waits for you because they don't know what they own.

Map your decisions into these three layers. Share the map with your team. Update it every quarter. You'll see two things happen fast: your team will move faster, and you'll get your time back.

I've seen this play out at a SaaS company running a 40-person team across Manila, Austin, and Berlin. Every decision landed in Slack. The founder was answering 60+ questions daily. The team was capable, but they were stuck in a pattern of asking instead of acting.

The shift came when they built a Decision Layers document in Confluence. One page. Three sections. Clear examples under each layer.

Within two weeks, Slack notifications dropped by half. The team started moving projects forward without waiting. One product lead said: "I didn't realize how much I already knew. I just needed permission to own it."

The framework didn't give them new skills. It gave them clarity about what they already had authority to do.

Leadership at scale is not about being available. It's about being clear.

Your team doesn't need more access to you. They need better systems that tell them when they have permission to move, when they need to collaborate, and when they should wait for your input.

The best distributed leaders don't answer every question. They build environments where most questions don't need to be asked.