Delegation Framework
Stop being the bottleneck. A step-by-step framework for handing off tasks to your team so they get done right without you.
What’s Inside
- The 5-Level Delegation Ladder: what the other person does and what you still see at each level
- The 3Ds: how a person climbs one level (document, demonstrate, duplicate)
- The 4-cause check for a task that comes back wrong, with a correction script and a fit test
- The Delegation Record: one page per task, with the rule, the reason and a take-back rule agreed in advance
- The Decision Rights Sheet and the 6-part complete escalation
- Handoff payback: the math that tells you which task to hand off first
- The 5-task list, 16 numbered worksheets, a 13-week scorecard with 30 and 90 day look-backs, and a 90-minute quickstart
The Problem
You hand off a task. A question comes back. You answer it, because answering is faster than explaining. A month later you are still doing the task, plus answering questions about it. The task moved. The authority did not.
Then one day it comes back wrong. You fix it yourself, quietly, and take it back. Your team learns to wait for you.
Delegation is not a time problem. It is a design problem: hand over the rule with the task, at the right level, and decide in advance what happens when it goes wrong.
The 5-Level Delegation Ladder
5 levels. One rung at a time. Levels belong to a person on a task, never to a person.
- Level 1, LOOK: they watch you do it. You decide and you do.
- Level 2, ASK: they gather the facts. You decide and you do.
- Level 3, RECOMMEND: they bring a recommendation. You approve it before they act.
- Level 4, DO+REPORT: they decide and act, then tell you what they did.
- Level 5, DO: they own it. You hear only when something on the agreed escalation list happens.
When a task comes back wrong, it drops one rung for a set time. Never back to you.
What Is in the Book
- Quick win: the 10-minute 5-task list, with your guess written first
- Why the owner stays the bottleneck: the queue-back loop and the cost of interruptions
- Count it: the one-week time log and the handoff payback in weeks
- The 5-Level Delegation Ladder
- How a person climbs one level: the 3Ds
- The Delegation Record and the Decision Rights Sheet
- When it comes back wrong: checklist first, the 4-cause check, the correction conversation, drop one level, the fit test, the take-back log
- Worked examples: 2 labelled composites and 1 that went wrong
- The weekly delegation scorecard, a 30-day sprint, common mistakes and the 30-day look-back
6 figures, plus a traffic-light check on your review time. Every number is a round, labelled hypothetical or one you count yourself.
Sample: The Handoff Payback
A task takes you 3 hours a week. Training it takes 4 hours of your time. For the first 4 weeks you review their work for 1 hour a week. That is 2 hours a week back while you review, so the training pays back in 2 weeks, and 3 hours a week after that. Over 13 weeks, 31 hours of your time come back.
Payback in weeks = your training hours / (task hours a week - your review hours a week). If your review takes as long as doing the task, it never pays back. That task is at the wrong level, or it has no written rule.
The book runs this on your own numbers for 5 tasks, and shows you the cash side too: what those hours cost if they are new paid hours, and what that works out to per hour of your time back.
Who This Is For
The owner of a small service business with 1 to 15 people (a painter, a plumber, a salon, a cleaning company) who still answers every question, redoes work that came back wrong, and has taken tasks back after handing them off.
Questions
Will it tell me how much of my work I should delegate?
No. There is no target in this book. You log a week of your own time, and that count is your baseline. The 30 and 90 day look-backs compare against it.
How many hours will I get back?
Nobody can promise that. It depends on which tasks you pick, who takes them and whether you run the training steps. The book shows you how to count it, not what it will be.
How many mistakes before I take a task back?
The book does not give a strike count. You write a take-back rule into each delegation record before the first mistake, and a mistake drops the task one level, not back to you.
Does it cover firing someone?
No. It ends at a fit test. Hiring and letting people go are covered in the Hiring Playbook, and the legal side is a conversation for an employment professional.
Read it in your library.
This is included with The Standard, along with every other guide in the library. Your monthly re-audit tells you which one to open next. $497 to start, $297/mo to keep it running. Cancel any month and keep everything.
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