Your Crew Is Calling Too Much. Here's Why.
Your Crew Is Calling Too Much. Here's Why.
Your phone rings at 8:15 AM. It's one of your experienced guys in the field.
He's at a job. Something's off with the address. He knows there are two customers with the same name. He had a conversation about this yesterday. He knows which one it is.
But he's calling you to confirm.
You confirm it. You both know it was a waste of time and $150 in lost billable hours while two guys sat in their trucks waiting for permission to do what they already knew.
This happens in your business how many times a week? Every day?
And you're blaming your crew for not thinking.
But that's not the problem.
Here's what's really happening:
Your crew calls all the time because you've taught them—deliberately or not—that thinking is your job, not theirs.
Every time someone made a call without you and it went sideways, you fixed it and made sure everyone knew about it. Every time a judgment call didn't match your standard, you corrected it. Every time you said "this is how we do things," you sent a message: Don't trust your own judgment. Call me first.
And now they do.
Your experienced guys—the ones with years of trade knowledge—are checking in on things they should know how to handle. Not because they're incompetent. Because you've built a system where thinking is unsafe.
Here's what it's costing you:
The obvious cost is time. One call a day across your crew is 250+ lost billable hours a year. In a mid-sized service business, that's $30K+ you can't invoice for because your team won't move without permission.
But the bigger cost is this: Your business has stopped scaling at your level of competence. Your crew isn't thinking anymore. They're executing. And when execution is all they're doing, you hit a ceiling. Fast.
Your best people will leave first—they'll find businesses where their experience actually matters. Your remaining team gets quieter and more dependent. And you stay stuck doing the thinking for everyone.
That's the owner ceiling. And it shows up as "my crew won't think."
What to look for in your own business:
How many calls are coming into the office on an average day? Not emergencies. Just calls about decisions that need to be made.
If that number is high, listen to why they're calling.
Are they calling with problems, or are they calling for permission? Are they calling to say "here's what I think we should do" or are they calling to say "what should I do?"
The second one? That's your culture talking. That's you.
Here's what to do about it this week:
Pick one decision your crew makes regularly that doesn't need to come to you.
Maybe it's: a customer calls with a small add-on. Maybe it's a scheduling conflict that needs adjustment. Maybe it's knowing which invoice to bill a job to when you have two customers with the same name.
Document it. Write down:
When this decision needs to happen
What information do you need to make it
What are the possible outcomes
For each outcome, what should happen next
That's a standard. That's what your crew is actually missing—not permission to think, but a framework to think within.
Give them that, and the calls stop. Not because they're suddenly braver, but because they're not guessing anymore.
Comment below: How many calls are coming in to your office every day that probably don't need to? What's the most common one?
