Making decisions faster without making them worse
Most shop decisions don't need a week. They need 15 minutes and a willingness to be wrong sometimes.
Two-way doors vs one-way doors
Most decisions are reversible. Treat them as cheap experiments and decide fast. Save the careful, slow process for the rare decisions that genuinely can't be unwound.
Default to the person closest to the work
The lead tech, the office manager, the dispatcher: each can make calls in their lane without your sign-off if you've set the limits clearly. Bottlenecks form when every decision flows through the owner.
Set a deadline for the decision itself
'We'll decide by Friday' moves a project further than another week of analysis. Indecision is a decision, and usually the worst one.
Take your version of this question further
This is one operator-tested angle on the question. Your shop, your size, your trade, and your team change the answer. Ask your specific version inside Ask a Shop Owner to get a response grounded in how owners like you actually handled it.