---
title: "CTO Bottleneck: Five Decisions Route Through You"
description: "Architecture review, senior hire, PIP escalation, budget call: when every decision routes through the CTO, nothing ships. A decision-rights fix that sticks."
url: "https://www.marian.coach/cto-decision-bottleneck/"
lang: "en"
image: "https://www.marian.coach/_astro/mentoring-04.DW02JUAo_1QJhAh.jpg"
---

CTO · VP Engineering · Head of Engineering

# CTO Bottleneck: Five Decisions Route Through You

Routing every directional call through the CTO worked at 20 engineers. At 80 it's why the roadmap slips, why your VPE is drowning, and why your calendar reads like an escalation queue. A better calendar won't fix it. Clearer decision rights will.

The unglamorous part is that this has to be written down, and almost nobody writes it down.

![Marian Kamenistak in a 1:1 mentoring session.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/mentoring-04.DW02JUAo_J9dPP.webp)

## Why saying you can decide this never works

You told your VPE they could decide it. They brought it back anyway. That isn't a confidence problem on their side, it's a risk calculation: if the call goes wrong and you weren't consulted, it's on them, and if they check with you first it's shared. Everyone below you is running that arithmetic, and verbal delegation loses to it every single time.

What changes the arithmetic is naming the decision class in writing, with the failure pre-forgiven out loud. Which calls your VPE owns outright, including the ones they'll occasionally get wrong. Which you sanity-check asynchronously, with a stated turnaround so that async doesn't quietly come to mean stalled. And which genuinely need a live conversation, a list that should be short and mostly about people and money.

Then the criteria pointing the other way, so the org knows when interrupting you is the correct move rather than guessing and defaulting to always. That's the half people skip, and it's the half that gives you your Fridays back.

By week 6 roughly 30% of what used to route through you no longer does, your VPE has a defined scope rather than an implied one, and the calls that still reach you are the ones that should.

## Working it 1:1

![Marian Kamenistak, mentor to CTOs and VPs of Engineering](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/marian-about.BisGE32e_mbivh.webp)

Bi-weekly, and this one usually takes six sessions rather than a whole quarter. I have sat in the seat: built Mews into a $2bn+ unicorn from 8 to 80 teams, led engineering at Manta before IBM acquired it, and spent 4+ years in the Bay Area as Principal Software Architect at Databricks. The pattern data comes from 3,400+ unique sessions with engineering leaders in 17+ countries. Rated 9.17/10 on average across 300+ reviews.

Pricing is public: 430 EUR per session, 361 EUR per session for ELC members, or 2,580 EUR per quarter (6 sessions over 3 months). The quarter drops to 2,166 EUR if you build the inquiry [with my AI](https://www.marian.coach/mentoring-chat/) the inquiry: under 16 minutes, €361 a session on every package. You only pay for a session you rate 7 out of 10 or higher. [Full pricing](https://www.marian.coach/pricing/).

[Book the free 30-min intro →](https://www.marian.coach/meet)Or email [marian@marian.coach](mailto:marian@marian.coach)

Related reads

-   [What the VPE owns](https://www.marian.coach/blog/from-vpe-to-solo-mentoring-year-one/)
-   [The engineering-management role checklist](https://www.marian.coach/blog/engineering-management-role-checklist/)
-   [Trust as the delegation multiplier](https://www.marian.coach/blog/how-to-build-trust-with-engineering-teams/)

## The other situations CTOs bring

-   [The board wants a delivery number →](https://www.marian.coach/cto-board-delivery-answer/)
-   [First 90 days in an inherited org →](https://www.marian.coach/new-cto-first-90-days/)
-   [Technical due diligence before a raise →](https://www.marian.coach/cto-technical-due-diligence/)
-   [AI adoption pressure from the board →](https://www.marian.coach/cto-ai-adoption-pressure/)
-   [A sounding board without politics →](https://www.marian.coach/cto-sounding-board/)

All six, plus the questions CTOs ask most: [CTO coaching & mentoring](https://www.marian.coach/cto-mentor/)

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