In The Room #34 – You’ve handed over the job. Have you handed over the decisions?
Picture the end of a leadership meeting. The action is agreed, a name goes against it, a date goes next to the name, and everyone moves on feeling the matter is settled.
Three weeks later it is back on the agenda and someone asks why it hasn’t moved. Rarely does anyone ask the question that matters: could the person with the name actually change the thing they were asked to change?
That is the gap I keep seeing. We hand over the job and keep the decisions. A routine change needs approval. The information sits with someone else. A second leader gives them a competing priority. They spend the week negotiating permission instead of making progress, and we read it as a lack of initiative.
Before you decide someone needs to show more initiative, check what authority went with the responsibility.
Authority is learned, not announced
“Use your judgement” doesn’t fix this, because people calibrate their authority to the last time they were corrected, not to what the meeting said. If someone once made a call you expected to approve and heard about it afterwards, they will check next time, however clearly you tell them otherwise. You feel interrupted. They feel careful, and they are. They are responding to what the organisation has taught them.
Sometimes the real problem is skill or willingness. But authority is the cheapest cause to check and the quickest to fix, so check it first.
I use three words for this: clarity, ownership and capacity. Decision rights sit between the first two, because you can’t own what you can’t decide. I’ll come back to all three next week.
Three things to make explicit
1. What can they decide without coming back to you? Be specific about the changes they can make and the decisions that need approval. Set boundaries that fit their experience and the cost of getting it wrong.
2. Do they have what they need to act? Check their access to information, systems and resources. If routine work depends on waiting for someone else to make a change, giving them responsibility hasn’t removed that dependency.
3. Who settles competing priorities? If two leaders give them work, agree who makes the final call when priorities clash. Otherwise they are left negotiating between expectations they didn’t set.
Before people leave the room
At your next leadership meeting, choose one action you are about to assign. Alongside the name and the deadline, agree which decisions the person can make and when they should come back to the team. Then ask them:
“What decisions, permissions or access do you still need to move this forward?”
Listen for anything you assumed was already clear. Agree what you can authorise, what needs to be resolved elsewhere and when you will check progress. Some decisions should still come back to you. Clear limits help people know when to act and when to ask.
Think of one thing you assigned this month. What did you hand over with it, and what did you keep? Reply and tell me. I read every response.
Before you move to the next agenda item, one question is worth answering: can this person leave the room and move this forward.
IN THE ROOM
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