Two-for-One: When Managing Your Team Becomes Too Much

In our “Two-for-One” format we highlight one key business-process challenge and offer two practical solutions. Today, we address a situation many organisations find themselves in: managers being responsible for increasingly large teams and complex workflows, yet with fewer resources, unclear priorities, and growing expectations.
In such settings, the symptoms often speak for themselves: the manager who is supposed to be thinking strategically is instead pulled into daily firefights, and the team suffers from slow decision-making, frustration, and burnout.
In short: the issue isn’t simply “too much work” — it’s a process problem. The workflows around decision-making, delegation and task intake funnel so much through one role that the manager becomes a bottleneck, and the team’s throughput and morale begin to suffer.

Problem: How Managerial Bottlenecks and Process Overload Play Out

When a manager becomes the central hub for approvals, performance oversight, crisis response and regular task-flow management, you end up with a “single point of failure.” In business process terms, that means: the process architecture routes too many activities through one node (the manager), so throughput slows, waiting times lengthen, and team frustration builds.
For instance: imagine a mid-sized tech firm where one manager has eight direct reports, is responsible for several cross-functional initiatives, and also supervises routine process approvals. Every new request funnels to them; they must triage, prioritise, delegate, approve, escalate. They spend their time reacting rather than planning. As a result: project cycles get delayed, the manager is burnt out, the team feels stuck, and strategic improvement falls by the wayside.
What’s causing this? Often:

• Unclear delegation rules — team members don’t know when they can act independently.
• Process drift — over time, workflows morph so that ad-hoc decisions go upward rather than being embedded locally.
• Lack of structured workflow design — there’s no clear intake, prioritisation or routing logic, so everything comes to the manager by default.
  Viewed through the lens of business process management (BPM), the underlying flaw is that leadership has become embedded in the execution flow. Rather than being an overseer of processes, the manager is the process. Without systematic delegation and workload-balancing mechanisms, the entire system slows down. The people are not to blame — the process design is.

Solution 1: Restructure into Smaller, Autonomous Units

Description

Instead of one large team with a single manager as the decision gateway, reorganise into smaller, semi-autonomous “process cells.” Each unit has clearly defined roles, its own workflows, and local decision-making authority. This reflects the principle of “think small groups, not individuals.”
In practice, you might segment by function, domain, geography or customer-type — but the key is each sub-unit is empowered to handle common workflows without requiring every decision to go through the manager.

Benefits

• Distributes workload and decision power across the smaller groups, reducing reliance on one person.
• Enhances ownership, speed and accountability, since each cell knows its remit and can act.
• Frees up the manager to shift focus from day-to-day firefighting to strategic process improvement, governance and coaching.

Long-Term View

Over time, this approach builds the foundation for process-oriented teams: ones that manage and improve their own workflows within a governance framework. You move toward greater BPM maturity — where teams are self-managed, resilient, and scalable. Once you remove the bottleneck, you gain capacity for alignment, innovation and continuous improvement.

Solution 2: Introduce Intake Gating and Prioritisation Rules

Description

A major contributor to process overload is that everything enters the workflow unchecked — every request, every idea, every task. The second solution is to implement a structured intake system: one that filters, prioritises, and assigns new work based on value and capacity. In short, you must learn to say “no” — even to good ideas. 
Set up an entry point for new requests (digital form, triage meeting, portfolio board) with clear criteria. Define who reviews, how tasks are ranked, and how decisions are made.

Benefits

• Workflow overload is prevented because not everything becomes “urgent.” You reduce random injections into the process.
• Resources are allocated to high-priority, high-impact work rather than chasing every incoming request.
• The process becomes transparent: team members understand why some tasks are accepted, some deferred or rejected.

Long-Term View

Over time, this intake system fosters a capacity-aware, data-driven process culture. Teams begin to make decisions based on bandwidth and strategic fit — not just urgency or hierarchy. As that culture takes root, stress decreases, process flow stabilises, and predictability improves.

Food for Thought

• What governance mechanisms are needed so that the autonomy gained by small units doesn’t turn into fragmentation or misalignment?
• How can you design “no-gate” processes that protect capacity without stifling innovation or initiative from team members?
• When empowering smaller units, how can managers maintain visibility and strategic oversight without falling back into micromanagement?
  Call to Action: For a deeper dive into designing process governance and decision frameworks, read our paper on process-oriented decision-making. It explains how structured delegation can accelerate both efficiency and engagement.

Conclusion

When managing your team becomes too much, the issue isn’t simply personal workload — it’s a process design problem. When workflows funnel through one role, decision times stretch, team frustration grows, and strategic improvement stalls.
By decentralising teams into smaller, autonomous units, and by introducing a disciplined intake and prioritisation process, organisations can transform chaos into clarity. Leaders free up their capacity, teams gain speed and ownership, and the overall process becomes more resilient.
Take a moment now: reflect on your own team and workflows. Where is the bottleneck? Which process needs redesign rather than more effort?

FAQ

1. What is process overload in management?

Process overload occurs when workflows, approvals, and decisions are concentrated in one role — often the manager — causing delays, inefficiency, and burnout across the team.

2. How do managerial bottlenecks affect team performance?

Managerial bottlenecks slow decision-making, reduce team autonomy, and create frustration by forcing every issue through a single approval point instead of distributed decision flows.

3. What are the best ways to reduce process overload?

Two effective methods are restructuring teams into smaller, autonomous units and introducing intake gating and prioritization rules to control workflow inflow.

4. How can intake gating improve workflow efficiency?

Intake gating filters and prioritizes new work requests based on capacity and strategic value, preventing overload and focusing resources on high-impact activities.

5. Why is autonomy important in business process management?

Autonomy empowers teams to make local decisions, speeds up execution, and allows managers to focus on strategic improvements instead of daily firefighting.