By: Eric Eduam
Imagine a construction project where an experienced project manager cannot approve a routine decision without waiting for the CEO. A senior quantity surveyor cannot authorise expenditure within an approved budget. A procurement manager cannot lead a tender process without executive intervention.
Meanwhile, the site team is expected to deliver on time, but site-related decision powers are made above the team. The question, then, is not why the project is delayed. It is whether the people being held accountable have actually been given the authority to deliver.
This problem is particularly relevant to founder/owner-led real estate and construction businesses. In a small company, close founder involvement can be valuable. The founder may know the clients personally, approve payments, negotiate with contractors and resolve technical issues. At that stage, centralised decision-making may appear efficient. The problem begins when the company grows and takes on increasingly complex projects, but its management systems fail to evolve with it. The risk is that if the management approach that worked at the small scale is seen as successful, it is assumed that it will work at the larger scale.
That is where the founder/owner trap begins. As projects grow in scale and complexity, excessive executive control can become counterproductive, creating significant obstacles to effective project delivery. The “all-knowing CEO” could turn into the “all-waited-for CEO”. Procurement slows due unsupported technical preference by executives. Design modifications and decisions drag when technical decisions are subjected to the CEO’s personal views rather than professional judgement. Payments are delayed. Contractor issues escalate unnecessary. The organisation may have highly qualified professionals, but authority has not grown alongside responsibility.
This is the difference between oversight and micromanagement. Effective oversight asks: Are we on programme? within budget? What are the major risks? Is the project team performing? Which decisions require executive intervention? Micromanagement asks: Who gave the Project Manager authority to approve even a minor, time-bound daily work expense? Why did the drawings change without my involvement? Why has a contractor or supplier been selected without my permission? Oversight strengthens the management system while micromanagement pulls the CEO into its routine operations. The CEO’s role should increasingly be to create the conditions in which competent professionals can make sound decisions and naturally deliver at their best.
When key decisions converge on one individual, the organisation suffers a decision bottleneck. The project runs at the speed of the CEO’s availability, feelings and decisions rather than the project team’s capacity. This is no minor administrative inconvenience in construction. The delay in getting approval can negatively affect labour, materials, subcontractors, equipment, and sequencing. The long meeting hours can cause major disruptions on site. This dependency is more destructive as the size of the organisation increases.
There is also a serious accountability problem. Authority and accountability must travel together. If a project manager is held responsible for programme delivery but cannot approve resources, influence procurement, make technical decisions or resolve operational problems within agreed limits, the organisation has created accountability without authority. That is not empowerment, it is exposure. Experts who understand that their decisions can be overturned will escalate more issues. Those escalations can then be seen as a sign of mistrust of employees by the organisation, whereas the real issue is that the system has trained the employees not to decide.
The same problem can be worsened by executive meeting culture. An executive office is a different environment compared to a construction site, which can mean that a two-hour meeting in the executive office can be a lost hour of productive time for the project manager, engineer, consultant or contractor on the site. The cost extends to work disruptions, delayed approvals and delayed decisions. Not all operational problems need to be discussed in a meeting, and not all disagreements at the site level need to be taken up with the CEO. An organisation that repeatedly interrupts professionals for executive confirmation is paying for its failure to delegate.
The way to resolve this is to rethink the CEO’s job. There is executive visibility without interference in every transaction through clear approval thresholds, reporting and escalation procedures. There should be a separation between senior leadership and professionals, with major risks, strategic direction, capital allocation and performance being dealt with by senior leadership while defined operational decisions being made by professionals.
The uncomfortable lesson for founders is that practices that have become the roots of the company can be the stifling constraint on the company’ expansion. Recruiting skilled top people and not investing in their training to give them the authority to perform their duties is not delegation. It is just putting a high price tag on a group of spectators. The greatest test of a founder is to prove that he can get the company to do a great job without controlling everything. A real estate or construction company is not where the CEO approves everything, particularly when the organisation gets larger, and projects get more complex.
