A leader's agony lies in the responsibility for decisions.

Leaders and practitioners dream different dreams every day when it comes to 'delegation.'

Reflecting on many mistakes made along the way, I have summarized 7 principles of delegation.

Voice is equal, but decision-making power does not need to be.

If the decision-maker (owner) is not clear, voice overrides decision-making power, and the company goes off the rails. Voice should be broad, but decision-making power must be clearly granted based on competence.

This is especially crucial at the boundaries between departments. If the owner is ambiguous, the definition of 'completion' varies, other departments' resources are taken for granted, and work drifts indefinitely.

Therefore, a single owner is better than co-owners. If inter-departmental conflicts are severe, temporarily dispatching some employees across departments works effectively. Furthermore, if discussions drag on for $n$ hours or more, an escalation standard must be established to bring the issue to upper management.

Context is the most critical element when delegating.

When employees make decisions with insufficient information, they make judgments that are only correct within the limited information they possess. To a CEO who knows the full history, this looks strange. This is a matter of lacking information, not competence.

Moreover, context is often lost when it depends solely on specific individuals, so it must be easily searchable and accessible to anyone. If the time it takes to transmit information creates a bottleneck, the decision-making power should be moved to where the information gathers the fastest.

The cost of asking questions must not be made too high.

Without a communication path for questions or behavioral standards for when answers are delayed for a certain period, bottlenecks cannot be reduced. And leaders must say, "I'm not sure either; please give me your opinions," before opinions will actually come in.

One must not confuse the comfort of a friendly relationship with the comfort to think critically and speak truth to power. An organization with a cheerful atmosphere often avoids conflict, leading to the disappearance of criticism and checks-and-balances, halting self-correction.

The criteria for business judgment must remain in the organization, not individuals.

Delegation that relies solely on individuals simply shifts the CEO's bottleneck to a star employee's bottleneck. For similar levels of judgment to emerge across various parts of the organization, standards, grounds, and examples must be organized within the company.

Additionally, a standard should be declared where authority is granted once a certain level of performance is achieved, preventing authority from concentrating solely on top performers.

Education and alignment of interests lower monitoring costs.

An hour spent on employee education ensures hundreds of correct decisions in the future. Without education, the CEO's decision-making speed ultimately becomes the upper limit of growth.

Equally important to education is the alignment of interests. Proper compensation alignment aligns interests and reduces monitoring costs.

Failing to delegate should be considered laziness that forfeits leverage, and any task with the same decision made 5 or more times should be placed in the delegation candidate pool.

True work begins the moment delegation is handed over.

Before handing over, one must establish target results, monitoring cycles, and stop-and-reintervention conditions. When handing over, it should be publicly declared so the organization recognizes it. After handing over, obstacles that are difficult to solve alone must be listened to and removed periodically.

If results are poor and authority is reclaimed according to the reintervention conditions, employees must also be told what they need to do to regain authority. Automatic re-delegation criteria, such as "If this metric or higher is achieved, report back on your own," provide motivation and free one from the trap of delegation failure.

Delegation requires looking at tasks and people together, and staged delegation is efficient.

When delegating, tasks and people must be evaluated together. Tasks are divided into two types: "one-way doors," which are hard to reverse once decided, and "two-way doors," where you can open the door and walk back even if you make a mistake.

Similarly, the depth of delegation should be divided into 3 stages: if the causal relationship of success is unknown, give execution methods; if execution methods can be conceived, give decision-making power; if leading indicators and risks can be managed, give only purpose and targets.

We think we are helping Ethiopia, but even at this moment, we are receiving help from Ethiopia. Ultimately, the existence of Ethiopia becomes the reason for our service and devotion. This cervical cancer cell analysis system project is the joy of being able to do it with the NGO 'Ethiopia Bet'.

[ⓒ Global Economic Times. 무단전재-재배포 금지]