Setting Authority and Decision Rights When You Delegate

Why 'use your judgement' isn't enough

Telling someone to 'use their judgement' feels generous, but it's actually one of the least useful things you can say when handing over work, because it doesn't tell them where the edges are. Judgement needs boundaries to operate within — a person can use good judgement about how to phrase a difficult email, but they still need to know whether they're allowed to offer a refund, waive a fee, or commit to a delivery date without checking first. Without that boundary stated, they'll either guess wrong occasionally, or, more commonly in a small business, ask you about everything just in case.

The fix isn't to remove judgement from the task — that would turn it back into a rigid script — but to state clearly which decisions fall inside their authority and which fall outside it. Once that line is drawn, judgement can operate freely within it, and the founder only gets asked about the things that genuinely need their input.

The three zones of authority

Most delegated tasks split into three types of decision. The first is decisions the person can make entirely alone, with no need to mention them to you at all — the outcome and the fact it happened are enough. The second is decisions they can make on their own but should report afterwards, so you stay aware of what's happening without having been asked in advance. The third is decisions that need your sign-off before they act, because the stakes, cost, or reputational exposure are high enough that you want to weigh in before, not after.

Being explicit about which zone a decision sits in removes a huge amount of low-value back-and-forth. A common failure mode is leaving every decision in the third zone by default, out of habit or anxiety, which guarantees the person will keep coming back to you for things that don't actually need your involvement — and quietly signals that you don't trust their judgement even on the smallest matters.

1. Decide alone, no report needed: routine, low-cost, easily reversible decisions within a stated limit
2. Decide alone, report afterwards: slightly higher-stakes decisions where you want visibility but not a bottleneck
3. Check with me first: high-cost, hard-to-reverse, or reputationally sensitive decisions that need your input before action

Making the limits specific

Vague authority statements like 'you can spend a bit if you need to' or 'use your discretion with unhappy customers' create exactly the ambiguity you're trying to remove. Specific limits — a named number, a named exception, a named scenario — remove that guesswork entirely. 'You can approve refunds up to £30 without checking with me. Above that, message me and I'll usually reply within the hour' tells the person precisely where the line sits and what happens if they hit it.

The same principle applies beyond money: authority over scheduling, over communications sent externally, over which supplier to use, or over how a customer complaint is resolved. Wherever you can attach a number, a named list, or a specific example to the boundary, do so — it converts a matter of opinion into something checkable by both of you.

• Spending: a specific limit per transaction, and whether it's per-item or cumulative per week
• Communications: which types of message can be sent without approval (routine replies) versus which need a check (anything to a named key client, anything involving a complaint escalation)
• Scheduling and commitments: whether they can promise dates or delivery windows to customers directly
• Exceptions: named situations that always need to come to you regardless of value, such as anything involving a safeguarding, safety or legal concern

Widening authority as trust builds

Authority levels aren't meant to be fixed forever. As someone demonstrates consistent good judgement against the outcomes you've defined, the sensible move is to widen what they can decide alone, reducing how often they need to check in. Do this deliberately, at a review point, rather than letting it drift — say explicitly 'from now on you can approve refunds up to £75 without checking, based on how the last two months have gone', so the person knows the change happened and why.

The reverse also needs to be possible without it feeling punitive: if a decision within someone's authority goes wrong in a way that suggests the limit was set too wide, it's reasonable to narrow it temporarily while you rebuild confidence, provided you say so directly rather than silently starting to double-check everything again, which reads as a loss of trust with no stated reason.

What happens when authority isn't stated at all

When authority is left unstated, one of two failure patterns tends to emerge. Either the person defaults to asking about everything, which defeats the point of delegating and keeps you as the bottleneck on every decision, however small. Or they act on their own initiative without a clear boundary, occasionally get it wrong through no fault of their own, and then find themselves blamed for a decision nobody actually told them they were or weren't allowed to make.

The second pattern is particularly corrosive to trust, because from the person's point of view they did what seemed reasonable and were criticised for it after the fact — a genuinely unfair position that tends to make people more cautious and less willing to use judgement in future, the opposite of what delegation is meant to achieve.

If you find yourself frustrated that someone 'should have known' where the line was, check first whether the line was ever actually stated — that's more often the real gap than a lapse in judgement.

Authority and legal or financial exposure

Some decision rights carry legal or financial weight beyond the immediate task, particularly anything involving signing contracts, committing the business to spend above a material amount, or making representations to customers about refunds, guarantees or delivery. For these, it's worth putting the authority limit in writing, not just stating it verbally, both so there's a clear record and so the limit is easy to refer back to if a dispute arises later.

Where a role carries meaningful authority over money or customer commitments as a standing part of the job, rather than a one-off delegation, it's also worth checking this is reflected accurately in the person's contract or role description, since a mismatch between stated authority and contractual terms can matter if a disagreement about their conduct ever needs resolving formally.