What to delegate to a system and what never to let go

This is the rule I use to decide what I delegate to a system and what I never let go: delegate what can be reviewed. Here it is in full, with the line between judgment and execution, and a template to map your week in 10 minutes and see how much time you get back.

Why execution eats your role

If your business depends on your body, every hour you spend executing is an hour you don't spend directing. Hiring without a clear line only changes who executes: you keep reviewing everything, because you don't know what you can let go of. It happened to me with scripts: until I wrote the line, the first draft was mine, and it was the task that ate the most of my week.

The problem isn't time: it's that you haven't written the line down.

The rule: delegate what can be reviewed

A task is execution when you can check the result without redoing it. A draft against what you asked for, a list against a written standard, a figure against its source. If in 5 minutes you can say “yes,” “no,” or “change this,” it's execution. Delegate it, to a system or to a person.

A task is judgment when the review is the work. Deciding what's worth doing, who you talk to, what gets sold and at what price, what goes out under your name. There's nothing to check it against, because you're what defines the result. That you don't let go of.

There's a second filter: what happens if it goes wrong. If the mistake gets fixed in minutes and costs nothing, delegate without checking every time. If the mistake costs you a client's trust or your name, still delegate the execution, but the signature stays yours: nothing goes out without you seeing it.

What I don't let go of

In my company the system executes and I sign off. An example: what gets published each week is my call; I don't write the draft. I review what arrives against what I asked for, in minutes, and what doesn't pass goes back.

What I don't let go of, in any one-person business, fits in five lines:

• What's worth doing this week, and what isn't.
• What goes out under my name.
• What gets promised to a client, and what they're told when something went wrong.
• What gets sold and at what price.
• What gets measured to know whether it worked.

Everything else can be reviewed. And what can be reviewed gets delegated.

The map of your week

The template is a table with seven columns. Each row is a task that repeats in your week: answering sales messages, writing the script, putting together the email, preparing the class, doing the invoice.

For each task you write down the hours per week, whether it's judgment or execution, whether it can be reviewed in 5 minutes, who does it today, what you review, and what happens if it goes wrong.

When you're done, you add up the hours of the rows you marked “execution,” “yes,” and “you.” That number is the time you get back when a system or a person does them, with you reviewing. The “execution” and “no” rows are tasks you could let go of but have nothing to review them against. They're missing a written standard. Write it, and they move to the first list.