Customer Replies Are Waiting for the President: How to Decide What the Team Can Decide

You want to answer the customer, but the final step always involves waiting for the president. The president may want the team to decide, while the team may prefer to ask first if decisions will later be reversed. Start with what the stalled decision actually involves.

Job titles alone do not establish what can be delegated. A person needs the relevant information, authority to decide under those conditions and someone to consult when uncertain. Build that combination around one customer response. This article addresses everyday operational decisions, not legal representative powers or authority to enter contracts.

Lay out the decisions that came back to the president

Gather recent customer matters referred to the president for approval. Record who wanted to decide what, which information was missing and how many hours or days they waited. Record the basis for the president's eventual decision as well.

For a customer currently waiting, distinguish established facts from unresolved matters and explain when you can next contact them. Do not promise conditions that still require approval. Work on delegation while also responding to the immediate customer's need for an update.

Was a delivery date impossible to determine because a supplier had not answered? Was cost known but the permitted discount range undefined? Was the work profitable but in conflict with a promise to a priority customer? In the last situation, faster approval alone is not enough. Unless management decides which promises take precedence, different employees may give different answers. Asking for more initiative without distinguishing these issues does not tell the team what to change.

Delegate one type of decision first

Choose a frequently recurring decision whose effects you can understand. Have the president and responsible manager set out:

• Who decides, and whom to consult if that person is unavailable.
• What information is needed and who can provide it.
• Conditions the team may decide within.
• Conditions that must be escalated.
• The record to keep after a decision and when it will be reviewed.

Address delivery dates, quality and effects on existing customers, not just financial limits. If priorities between customer promises are unclear, management needs to settle that policy before handing over authority.

OpenStax's Introduction to Business 2e describes delegation as assigning a degree of authority and responsibility to subordinates in an organization's chain of command.[1] This explains a general concept; it is not research measuring effects in Japanese SMEs. The items above are practical recommendations for delegating everyday decisions.

Before starting, use past cases. Have the president and responsible manager decide independently, then compare their reasons. If conclusions differ, examine whether the information differed or the conditions to protect were interpreted differently. This is a trial to identify unclear criteria before handling an actual request.

The president also needs to record reasons afterwards

If the president changes a decision made within the delegated scope, explain what differed from the original assumptions. Was there a new fact, an unclear condition or a policy change? Changing the outcome without recording the reason leaves nothing useful for the next decision.

If the employee cannot gather information that meets the conditions, reconsider training and access to information. If the manager already has too much work, granting more authority alone will not create capacity. Track waiting time, reasons for escalation and cases requiring a new explanation to the customer, then adjust the delegated scope.

Using management meetings to decide policy addresses management agreement. Turning principles into everyday decisions addresses shared criteria in practice. This article addresses the specific approval delays between those two.

HUV DESIGN OFFICE supports defining reasons to choose a company as management decision criteria and turning them into something the organization can use. See our services. If the issue is formal approval rules or contractual authority, consider it with the relevant specialists.

Not every decision needs to move to the team. Management should decide cases carrying substantial company risk. The purpose of delegation is not to eliminate approval. It is to identify when approval is needed.

Source

[1] OpenStax, Introduction to Business 2e, “7.4 Authority—Establishing Organizational Relationships,” published April 22, 2026; accessed October 8, 2026. https://openstax.org/books/introduction-business-2e/pages/7-4-authority-establishing-organizational-relationships

Author: Daisuke Irikura, Representative Director, HUV DESIGN OFFICE