How to Write the Delegation Contract for the Operation
The audit tells you what to shed. This skill is the mechanism that sheds it: a written contract naming who owns each part of the operation and what they decide without you. Authority that is not written down flows back uphill the first urgent week.
Developing
Start here. Build the foundation.- 1
List every area of the operation in one sitting, then force a single name against each. When you catch yourself writing two names, make the ownership call you have been deferring. Draft the artifacts in a day, then refine with the owners; a rough contract in force beats a polished one in draft. Done means zero orphans and zero co-owners on the map.
- 2
For each name, write the decisions they now make alone: spend up to a figure, exceptions of defined classes, staffing within plan. Make each threshold concrete enough to use this week. You know it worked when a deputy makes a call inside their threshold without telling you first.
Proficient
Build consistency and rhythm.- 3
At each contract refresh, challenge every retained item: what breaks if an owner made this instead. Release anything whose reason has gone stale. Working means the retained list gets shorter at most refreshes, not longer.
- 4
When someone appeals a deputy's in-threshold call to you, send them back to the owner in the same conversation. If the decision genuinely worries you, change the threshold going forward and say so openly. The signal this is working: appeals to you dry up within a quarter or two.
Mastered
Operate at the highest level.- 5
Ask each owner for their own map and thresholds, then review the seams where areas meet. Mastery here looks structural: authority is written two levels deep, and the operation's decisions no longer have a single choke point at any tier.
Common Pitfalls
Avoid the common failure modes.- Writing thresholds so vague ('minor spend') that every real case still gets escalated to be safe.
- Quietly reversing one deputy decision and expecting the rest of the contract to retain its force.
- Letting the retained list grow back with each reorganization because retention feels safer than release.