Delegation Means Letting Go

When I delegate a decision, I’ve made it someone else’s call. Within the scope I’ve given them, they get to choose. That includes choosing things I wouldn’t.

That can be hard when I know the technology well. I can probably spot a cheaper approach or a problem they haven’t considered – and I’m accountable for the result. But being accountable for a project doesn’t mean owning every decision. When I delegate, I’m saying “you own this piece, and are accountable to me for it”.

As a director, I need to make the whole team more effective. That means taking a broader view than I get from working through each engineering problem in detail. If I keep making the decisions I’ve supposedly delegated, I’m undermining the people I’ve delegated to – both by not empowering them to decide and by making myself a bottleneck. I’ve also left myself with less time to do my actual job.

Another Thing to Maintain

Suppose a manual reporting process needs replaced and we have a deadline of around six weeks. I delegate this to a senior engineer. We already have a reporting service, so I’d prefer to extend it. They decide to implement a small, separate tool instead – the existing service belongs to another team, the changes we would need aren’t on that team’s schedule, and the engineer thinks waiting for the other team would miss our deadline.

I see their rationale, but I don’t particularly want another service to maintain. Somebody will have to deal with its upgrades and failures long after this deadline has passed. I think the other team can deliver for us in time.

But I didn’t make using the shared service a requirement, because it wasn’t. The decision they’ve made was within the scope I delegated. So it’s their call.

What I Need My Time For

A senior engineer is the right person to work through the reporting design in detail. As a director, I need to consider why this report takes priority over the other things we’ve been asked to deliver.

Time and money are not unlimited. Suppose we have more work to do than we have time and budget for. I need to be spending my time with my fellow leaders deciding what things we actually do. I can fill my week with useful technical conversations while those problems sit unresolved, but that just eats up the time we’re already short of.

Once Work Has Started

Once the engineer chooses the separate tool, I need to support them in delivering it. If another team questions the choice, I should make clear that it was theirs to make. Referring every challenge back to me for a fresh decision would undo the authority I gave them. Using “it was their decision” to disclaim responsibility for the result would be cowardly. I chose who to give the work to and how much room they had to do it.

We should agree early on how much involvement I will have. Someone doing this kind of work for the first time may want to work through estimates together; an experienced engineer might only need to flag a change to the delivery date.

Suppose the connection to the source data takes longer than expected. We need to look at the remaining work and see whether the deadline is still realistic. Reopening the topic of using the shared service won’t get the connection finished.

I would intervene if the deadline was at risk or we discovered the design couldn’t meet an unknown requirement. Usually I’d ask the engineer to work out what to change, but some problems might require my involvement to resolve. I should be able to explain which ones and why.

I have work to deliver too. In this example, the teams need an answer about their competing commitments. If they’re still waiting when the reporting tool ships, I’ve not done my job.

After We Ship

Suppose the separate tool works, but takes more maintenance than we’d prefer, and we later learn that the shared service could definitely have delivered in time. That doesn’t mean the call was wrong. They made the best call they could based on the information available to them at the time.

I have to be comfortable with good work going out that I would have done differently. I can offer advice and intervene when something moves outwith the scope we agreed, but within it the decision belongs to the person I gave it to. My disagreement doesn’t entitle me to take it back.

That is part of accepting a director’s job. There is more work than I can do myself, and some of it needs the authority and perspective of my role. I need other people to make the engineering decisions so I can get on with that work. I can’t take on the wider responsibility and keep their decisions too.