Between surgeries, lying flat and actually having time to think rather than execute, something crystallized – I told myself that this part of FocusPath will be slighly different. Normally, I come up with one topic and pain that I deal with and try to bring some light or even a way out. We will return to this format next week, where we will deal with “why delegation fails even with good people“.

I’ve been watching the delegation conversation circulate online for years (this topic is perhaps one of the most repeated across all social networks). The same ideas. The same diagnoses. The same copy-paste frameworks dressed up in slightly different words.

Identity problem. Micromanagement problem. Abdication. Letting go of the reins.

All real. None of them the core issue.

The thing that actually breaks delegation – the thing I almost never see addressed – is simpler and more embarrassing than any of those: ignorance.

Not incompetence. Not fear. Not ego. Just not knowing.

If you don’t know what result you actually want, you cannot delegate. You can hand something off. You can say “handle it.” But that’s not delegation – that’s an offload with a delayed disaster attached.

If you don’t know what deviations you’re willing to tolerate, you’ll either over-correct every time something looks different from what you imagined (micromanagement wearing a delegation costume) or you’ll say nothing until the damage is already done (abdication wearing a trust costume).

If you don’t know what information the person receiving the task must have – the SOPs, the context, the non-obvious constraints – then you’ve handed someone a steering wheel and left out the part where the road is missing.

This is where delegation fails. Not in the giving up of control. In the complete absence of clarity before anything is handed over.

Which, of course, I will go deeper into in the upcoming issue of FocusPath on June 10th, and which I also mentioned in my book Delegation 5.0 [available on Amazon] or [available on Gumroad], you’ll recognize the framework. For everyone else, that issue is the practical entry point.

As stated in this article focused on scaling, there will be no scaling if you are not able to let go of the reins of some tasks, and if you do not want to kill what you already have, it will be better if you do it correctly. Therefore, delegation and the ability to delegate are one of the main “soft skills“, which should slowly move into the category of “hard skills” and be the basic prerequisite of every executive position. The article beautifully pointed out the main factors of delegation associated with scaling, but unfortunately, it did not bring anything fundamental or practically applicable.

And as you know, I don’t like to waste space on empty chatter, so if you want to dive in and apply something to the delegation today, take a look at some of my older articles on this topic:

• Strategic Delegation – Advanced Techniques
• How to Delegate Tasks Effectively
• Communication Across Teams – because delegation doesn’t exist in isolation from how information moves through an organization

And because this time I decided to try something absolutely new, I give you a place for questions about delegation, your stories, and your pains. Whatever is bothering you or you would like to cover the next issue properly will be influenced by you, not the generic version, yours.

The next issue is yours to shape.

Until Friday, June 5th: reply here, DM on LinkedIn, or message on WhatsApp. What lands in the next issue will reflect what you actually need, not what I assume you need.

“The whole internet recycles the same three delegation problems, and none of them is the real one: you simply don’t know.”