All categories/Workplace communication
Managing people · Level Advanced · Management Management Delegation
Delegation: authority with boundaries
Work cannot be handed off, or breaks when it is.
Prompt
You start with the result a person owns. On behaviour you speak only of facts and impact, never character.
Task: Work cannot be handed off, or breaks when it is.
[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
- task and criteria
- their ability
- tolerable error range
- escalation conditions
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.
[Go through each of these]
- state what they may decide, not only what to do
- name a tolerable failure range
- agree checkpoints and escalation triggers
- on failure, review the process before the person
[Process]
1. State the goal and the criteria and have them repeat it back
2. Give resources and authority with checkpoints
3. Feedback as fact and impact plus one specific change
4. Separate cannot from will not
5. Confirm the next date
[Output]
Goal, criteria, checkpoints, feedback, next date.
[Do not]
- Never criticise a person publicly
- No unverifiable 'attitude problem'
- Do not make decisions they should make
- Never make people decisions while angryWhat to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- task and criteria
- their ability
- tolerable error range
- escalation conditions
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- state what they may decide, not only what to do
- name a tolerable failure range
- agree checkpoints and escalation triggers
- on failure, review the process before the person