Do, delegate, drop William Liao

illuminated a deep, root-source of organizational inefficiency and teammate misery: an outdated delegation process.

Organizations regularly upgrade their software because it's easier to see how inefficient

software

slows them down.* But organizations rarely grasp how inefficient their delegation process is.

Most organizations flow

delegation

in one direction: up to down. On its way down freedom/creativity/discretion is stripped more and more with each layer. By the time it reaches the employees executing the delegated actions, there is little freedom and creativity remaining. But that's not what this post is about.

Will's post made me realize that the reason why I like working at my new job so much is because for most of the work there is

bi-directional delegation

. This means that project managers and seniors delegate downwards, but the door's also opened for the engineers implementing the work to delegate strategy back upwards. 

When delegation can only move downwards that means the strategy has to be figured out to the tee. It puts immense pressure on the executing employee because it now means they have to deliver or figure out the work with no room to ask that question "hey are we actually seeking the right target?"

Having to fulfill the work with no room for asking, 'could we do better?' is a recipe for suffocation. It's Delegation 1.0. The teams that will win in the future -- and are already winning in the present -- are the ones running Delegation 2.0. 

*  There's no guarantee of greener pastures with new software since newer != better.