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Authority and Delegation
Transferring authority with the task, supervising without reclaiming it, and refusing delegation upward.
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01
Delegating Without Authority
When you cannot compel anyone, the instinct is to soften the ask. Softening produces ambiguity, and in a discretionary setting an ambiguous request loses to every clear demand elsewhere in a person's life.
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02
Delegating to Someone Who Will Do It Worse Than You
The comparison that matters is not your version against theirs on this occasion. It is the whole stream of future occasions, and who will be available for them.
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03
Accountability Without Surveillance
Accountability is constructed at the beginning, not assembled after a failure. Asking why afterward, having named no standard beforehand, is blame allocation wearing the word.
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04
Upward Delegation and How to Refuse It
Nobody intends it. A problem arrives in your office belonging to someone else and leaves belonging to you, and the transfer happens in a single sentence you volunteered.
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05
Supervising Without Taking It Back
Most intervention happens on the axis of difference while the leader believes it is happening on the axis of risk. The threshold has to be set before the work starts.
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06
The Four Levels of Delegation
Both parties assume a level, neither states it, and they assume in opposite directions. Naming the number out loud removes most delegation failure at no cost.
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07
Delegation Is Not Assignment
Handing someone a task while keeping the decisions it requires produces a person accountable for a result they cannot reach. The failure is then recorded as theirs.