The owner approval bottleneck

When every exception routes to the owner, the business has a decision-system problem—not a motivation problem.

Separate reversible decisions from consequential ones. Write decision thresholds, give the team examples, and review a sample after the fact instead of reviewing every case in advance.

AI can help assemble context or draft a recommendation, but authority and accountability should stay visible.

Find the actual pressure point

A useful next step is to describe one recurring bottleneck in concrete terms: what triggers it, who touches it, where it waits, and what a good result looks like.