The problem is that the difference between a routine decision and a critical one is not always obvious at the time, especially if the person who would know that

The problem is that the difference between a routine decision and a critical one is not always obvious at the time, especially if the person who would know that this particular decision is critical is unavailable. One solution is to build a team culture that communicates asynchronously by default, like what 37 Signals describes. This has efficiency costs, but it does seem to work. Another solution is to co-locate everyone, communicate frequently face-to-face, and build cultural norms that reduce the cost to individual productivity. My team is working on this approach, but we are considering the benefits of remote work and asynchronous communication.