How leaders can slow down a project without realizing it.
Are you quietly the reason your program slows down when you step away?
On a lot of calls, I see the same pattern: every requirement change, vendor question, and test plan tweak waits on one person. Usually the most senior technical leader. The moment they’re in meetings, on travel, or out sick, everything starts to idle.
In high-stakes hardware, this is a schedule and risk problem.
I just got back from a 2‑week sailing trip, bareboat chartering around the islands of Croatia. No laptop. No MS Teams messages. No email.
When I came back, nothing was on fire. Prototypes were moving. Design reviews happened. Issues were resolved without me.
That didn’t happen because I’m “chill about vacations.” It happened because we’ve spent years making sure I’m not the only person who can unstick a design decision or approve a path forward.
For a lot of device teams, the opposite is true:
Every ECO, test deviation, or supplier change has to hit the same person’s inbox. Critical context lives in one brain: “Ask Bob, he’s the only one who understands that subsystem.”
Design reviews turn into status meetings because no one feels safe deciding without the “integral person” on the call.
In a regulated environment, that shows up as blown milestones, rushed documentation, and late discovery of problems that should have been caught early.
Chad is a professional engineer and has spent over 25 years leading complex engineering projects in medical device development and defense systems. He's been hands-on from early-stage prototyping to full-scale manufacturing, giving him unique insights into the challenges of bringing devices to market. Chad is always thinking about how to improve the development process to help clients save on manufacturing costs without reducing quality.
Here are five ways I’ve worked on removing myself as that bottleneck:
1. Change the definition of “job security”
If your device can’t move without you, you are a single-point failure. Real value is when your judgment is built into the system, not locked in your head. Your understudy might be slower, but they should be able to keep critical work moving while you’re offline.
2. Hire great people and teach them how you think
Don’t just answer questions with “yes/no.” Answer with “here’s how I’m thinking about this tradeoff.” Over time, your team can ask “How would [you] approach this?” and get close enough without you on the call.
3. Make a “hit by a bus list”
List every activity where you are the only person who can say yes or execute: approving requirement changes, deciding on test coverage, clearing vendors, resetting a license server, updating a critical model. One by one, document and assign an understudy. If you got hit by a bus, who’s taking over that task?
4. Document like someone else will have to fix it at 2 a.m.
Assume the next person touching this work will be doing it under time pressure, without you. Screenshots, links, decisions, and rationale. Enough that they can see what you did and why.
5. Stress-test while you’re still in the building
Let decisions run without you in the loop, on purpose, while you’re available as a safety net. Watch where things get stuck, then fix the underlying gaps in training, access, or documentation.
If your team can only move when you are online, your next vacation, product launch, or audit will all feel equally stressful.
Quick test: if you went off-grid for 10 days, which 2 or 3 decisions would bring your current program to a halt? Hit reply and tell me. That’s where to start.
