Decision fatigue: which decisions still need to be yours?

The hardest thing about running an agency isn't making decisions. It's knowing which decisions still need to be yours.

One of the things nobody really prepares you for when you start an agency is the sheer number of decisions you have to make.

Hire or hold off?

Pitch or walk away?

Invest or conserve cash?

Push back on the client or let it go?

Step in or trust the team?

And as the agency grows, the decisions don't disappear. They just get bigger.

The mental load of making decisions

Decision fatigue describes what happens when the cumulative mental effort involved in making decisions starts to affect our ability to make them well.

And it isn't necessarily the number of decisions that's the problem. It's their complexity, their consequences and the fact that, as founder, you're often making them without knowing whether or not you've got them right.

Research backs this up. Studies into decision and choice overload suggest it's not simply the volume of decisions that wears us down. Complexity, uncertainty and the difficulty of the decision all matter. And when we're overloaded, we're more likely to put decisions off, lose confidence in them or look for the easiest option. 

I suspect most founders have stayed awake worrying about whether they made the right hire, whether they’ve gone after the right client, whether they’ve made the right call.

When you're mentally overloaded, it's tempting to put off difficult decisions, go with the safest option or simply stick with the status quo, which isn't ideal when some of the decisions sitting on your desk could have a significant impact on the business.

Why does everything still come back to you?

Interestingly, research into growing businesses suggests there's a psychological dimension to delegation too. Founders develop a strong sense of ownership over the businesses they've created, which can make handing genuine decision-making authority to other people surprisingly difficult. 

There's another problem.

If you're making too many decisions, it may not simply be because you're the founder. It could be because you've allowed yourself to become the decision-making bottleneck.

That's easily done.

Founders care enormously about their businesses. They've built them from scratch and have often spent years being involved in almost everything.

Letting go can be difficult.

And sometimes it genuinely does seem easier to say:

"It's quicker if I just do it myself."

The trouble is, if you're still saying that as the agency grows, you're going to be constantly running out of bandwidth.

It also begs another question: Where are the other grown-ups?

Decide what only you can decide

One of the most important shifts you can make as a founder is to stop asking "How can I make all these decisions?" and start asking "Which of these decisions actually need to be mine?"

Some undoubtedly do.

The direction of the business. Major investments. Key senior hires. Decisions that materially affect the future of the agency.

But plenty don't.

If every recruitment decision, client problem, content approval and spending request is still finding its way to you, something isn't working.

That means building a leadership team with genuine authority and autonomy, being clear about where responsibility sits and accepting that other people won't always make exactly the same decision you would.

And that's perhaps the hardest part.

Delegation isn't really delegation if the team has to come back to you every time something important happens.

You won't always know if you're right

There's a final reality of leadership that's worth accepting.

You will never have perfect information.

There will always be decisions where you don't know the right answer.  And usually there’s more than one right answer anyway!

Good leadership isn't about eliminating that uncertainty. It's about gathering the information you need, listening to people you trust, making the best judgement you can and then committing to it.

Because ultimately, the answer to decision fatigue isn't becoming better at making hundreds of decisions.

It's making fewer of them.

And saving your energy for the ones that really matter.

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If you fancy an exploratory chat about how we can help you with your agency, let’s find a time.