Delegation — tasks vs outcomes
What you'll learn
Delegate outcomes when growing people; delegate tasks when the deadline owns you.
- Task = predictable deliverable, no judgement growth.
- Outcome = judgement growth, less predictable path.
- Authority moves with responsibility, or it isn't delegation.
There are two ways to delegate: by task ('write a draft of the Q3 plan by Friday') and by outcome ('we need a Q3 plan the team can rally behind; you own it'). New managers default to task-delegation because it feels safer; experienced managers delegate outcomes whenever the IC has enough context to choose the path.
The trade-off: outcome-delegation builds judgement but loses you the ability to predict the exact deliverable; task-delegation predicts the deliverable but doesn't build judgement. For people you're growing, lean outcome. For deadline-critical / low-risk-of-wrong-path work, task is fine.
Never delegate the responsibility without delegating the authority to make the supporting decisions. "Own the Q3 plan, but check every call with me" is fake delegation — and your IC will read it as distrust, even when you meant it as caution.
Key points
- Task = predictable deliverable, no judgement growth.
- Outcome = judgement growth, less predictable path.
- Authority moves with responsibility, or it isn't delegation.
Pitfalls
- Outcome-delegating to someone without enough context — sets them up to fail.
- Keeping decision authority while assigning the work; reads as distrust.
Ask your skip-level
In a real Adept rollout this routes to your company's leadership Claude project; in the demo it opens a fresh Claude chat.