How decisions are made impacts the organization. Set aside whether an organization makes good decisions. Where decisions are made inside the organization affects the organization itself. As a leader, it’s your job to make sure decisions are being made at the right level to develop the organization you want.

Let’s think about an organization where decisions are made at the top. Strong individual leaders who drive decisions that could be made lower down. The leaders at the top feel it necessary to make these decisions themselves. They rob their middle-level leaders of the opportunity to learn how to make these decisions. And this organization is handicapped from growing beyond the capacity of the top-level leader. This leader trains the organization to bubble decisions up and s/he becomes a bottleneck.

Let’s think about a different organization where decisions are made at the very bottom. Individual performers are left to make decisions that have impact beyond their sphere of responsibility. This organization becomes quickly fractured; with decisions that don’t fit together. Lots of local optimizations that come with lots of enterprise redundancy. This organization also has trouble scaling up and growing large. This organization is a patchwork quilt without vision into the larger picture.

It is the leader’s responsibility to consider where decisions are made. And to choose to build the organization we know to support our long-term goals. I heard recently a Manager Tools podcast that briefly referenced the difference between a manager and an executive. An executive is responsible for immediate results and long-term strategy. Where a manager is more focused only on the immediate results. As you develop executive skills, think about the impact of where decisions are made on your organization.

An organization that develops strong middle managers as it grows can scale beyond some of the limits of individuals. A leader that invests in developing decision making skills down the organization will enable that organization to scale. This investment is creating long-term capacity.

I also see this as where “no-manager” organizations struggle. Not everyone wants to spend time on decision making and communication as required by middle management. It’s not reasonable to expect everyone to be held responsible for managing the organization (as in the holocracy concept). Some folks are good at this (and like it). Many don’t.

Thinking about decision making inside the organization is a balancing act. Small startups simply don’t require too much of this consideration. There aren’t many people to manage. However every startup I know has a crazy growth goal.

As a company grows, this balancing act becomes more and more important. An organization that explodes with growth without middle managers will struggle to scale effectively. Take a moment to consider where your organization is on the size spectrum. Ask yourself where you can influence what level decisions are made in your organization.