Your team brings you problems. A number two brings you decisions.
There is a simple test for whether someone takes load off you or adds to it: when something breaks, do they hand you a question or a recommendation. It is the whole difference, and it is a habit you can train.
There is a simple test for whether someone is a real number two or just another person you have to think for. When something goes wrong, do they bring you a problem, or do they bring you a decision. The gap between those two is the whole difference between staff who add to your load and staff who take it off you, and it is a habit you can actually train.
A problem is a question. A decision is a recommendation.
A problem sounds like: this broke, what do you want to do. A decision sounds like: this broke, here are two ways forward, option one costs this much and takes this long, option two costs less but takes longer, I would go with the first, do you agree. One makes you do the thinking. The other makes you do five seconds of approving. Same person, same problem, completely different weight on you.
What makes it a decision
Two or more real options
Not one dressed-up option and a strawman. Genuine alternatives someone actually considered, so the choice is real.
The cost and the timeline of each
Every option carries a consequence in money and in time. Naming both is what turns a wish into a decision you can actually make.
A recommendation
The person closest to the problem says which one they would pick and why. You can overrule it, but they have to have a view. No view means they have not finished the thinking.
Why this is worth training
It moves the thinking down to where the information already is, which is usually not you. It builds judgment in the person doing it, because proposing a decision is how you learn to make one. And it hands you your time back, because approving is fast and investigating is slow. A team trained to bring decisions is the difference between a CEO and an overworked employee who happens to own the company.
How to install it
Say the rule out loud
Tell people plainly: do not bring me a problem without at least two options and a recommendation. Most people were never told this is the standard.
Send the bare problem back
When someone brings you a naked problem, do not solve it. Ask for the options. It feels slower once and faster forever.
Reward the first good one
The moment someone brings you a real decision, notice it out loud. What gets acknowledged gets repeated.
Do it upward too
This is not only a rule for your team. It is how you should show up to your own advisor, your board, or anyone whose time you are borrowing. Bring the decision, not the mess. It is the fastest way to be taken seriously by people more senior than you, and it is the same muscle you are asking your team to build.
Problems flow uphill by default. Decisions only flow uphill when you train them to. Install this one habit and the amount of thinking that lands on your desk drops without a single person leaving or a single system being built.
Still the one who has to think for everyone?
Building people who bring decisions instead of problems is a large part of getting a founder out of the weeds, and it is what I do inside a business. The strategy call is free and it is a real diagnosis. If you are not there yet, the community costs nothing.