Here, I explore history, mythology, and the deeper forces shaping our world — and how men and families can prepare for, and adapt to, these times of great change.
Who can spend £500?
Who in your business can spend £500 without asking you?
If the answer is nobody, you don't have a team. You have an audience.
I ask owners this because the answer maps the whole business in one number. It tells me how decisions travel, how much initiative is legal, and how many times a day the queue forms at one desk.
The usual defence is trust. It's not that I don't trust them, it's just easier to run it past me. But watch what the ambiguity actually does. The diligent ones miss things that were never explicitly theirs, then get quietly blamed, because surely they should have known. The coasting ones shelter in the fog, because you can't hold someone to a line nobody drew. Both look like people problems. Both are design problems, and firing your way out of a design problem just hands the same fog to the next person.
The fix is written, boring, and liberating. Who decides what, up to what amount, informing whom. Staff matters, client concessions, kit, suppliers. The specific thresholds matter less than the fact that they exist and everyone knows them. Then the strange thing happens. People start deciding, and deciding well, because it turns out they always could. They just couldn't prove they were allowed.
Reply with your number, the largest amount anyone in your business can commit without you. I'll tell you what it says about the year you're about to have.
David
David Schofield · Purpose In Action
Purpose In Action Coaching & Consulting
Here, I explore history, mythology, and the deeper forces shaping our world — and how men and families can prepare for, and adapt to, these times of great change.
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