Delegation and oversight
What to delegate, who decides, and how you know it worked
This page used to carry a percentage. We have taken it down. A figure like that depends entirely on the organisation, the process and the people, and we cannot evidence it for yours. What we can do is show you how the decision is actually made.
Four questions before you delegate anything
Is the answer already agreed?
Work that applies knowledge the organisation has already written down delegates well. Work that requires a judgement nobody has made yet does not.
Would you be comfortable reading it afterwards?
If a draft going out under your name would need checking anyway, set it to prepare a draft rather than to send. That is a setting, not a limitation.
Who is accountable when it is wrong?
Delegation does not move accountability. Name the person before the work starts, not after the first mistake.
How will you know in six weeks?
Decide the measure before you switch anything on. If you cannot name it, you are not ready to delegate that work yet.
Oversight is a setting
There is one accurate answer to the question people ask most, which is whether the system acts on its own. It depends on how you set it, per workspace and per kind of work. There are three positions.
Do nothing
The agent reads and organises, and takes no action. Useful while a team is still deciding what good looks like.
Prepare a draft for approval
The work is done and waits for a person to approve, edit or dismiss it. Approving it is what makes it real.
Act within limits
The agent acts on its own for defined work, inside limits the organisation sets, with every action recorded. Anything outside those limits still comes to a person.
Complaints, anything legal or financial, and anyone asking to be left alone always go to a person, whatever the setting says.
Measuring what changed
Measure movement, not activity. A record full of completed tasks tells you the system was used. It does not tell you anything moved. The measures worth agreeing at the start are simple: how long an enquiry waits for a first proper answer, how many pieces of work were prepared and how many a person approved unchanged, how many relationships are further along than they were last month, and what the whole thing cost to run.
We will not tell you in advance what those numbers will be for you. We will help you agree them, and then show you what they actually are.