People Closest to the Problem Rarely Get to Solve It

Imagine you're working customer support.

By Thursday afternoon, you've heard the same complaint 12 times.
Customers are getting stuck at the same step. They're frustrated. Some are leaving. You know what's causing it, and you have a pretty good idea how to fix it.

There's just one problem: You don’t have the authority to fix it.

So you tell your superior. They raise it in a meeting. Notes are taken. Weeks later, a decision is made by people who have never spoken to the customers experiencing the issue.

This is very common in large organizations, and it's chiefly because information and authority often live in different parts of the organization.

The people closest to the customer usually spot problems first. The people furthest away usually have the power to fix them. As organizations grow, the distance between those two groups grows too.

This is why human-centric organizations give people closest to the problem the autonomy to solve it within clear boundaries. When employees have the authority to act on what they know, problems get resolved faster, customers get better outcomes, and people develop a stronger sense of ownership and pride in their work.

The goal isn't to give everyone a vote on every decision. It's to make sure decisions are made as close to the problem as possible, while giving people enough freedom to act when the answer is obvious.