On delegating authority

I am a huge fan of the Product Owner model of leadership. I don’t know exactly why, it just resonated with me from the moment I discovered it. Sometimes you fall in love with something with your heart and your head takes a lot of time to catch up. But as time goes by, I discover some of the reasons why I love this Agile model of the world so much. One of these things is the concept of delegating authority. To me, this is so fundamental to the way of working of the future. This is such a break from the ways of working of the old world. It is, in fact, the complete opposite.

Delegating authority is a crucial aspect of Agile. In the Agile Manifesto, there is a principle that talks about it:

“Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.”

This is one of the twelve principles behind the Agile Manifesto. There are clear leadership principles in this:

1. Leadership is about creating the right environment for people.
2. Leadership should support the people in the team, leadership is a serving role.
3. Leadership is about trusting the people on the team.
4. Leadership is about creating motivation, people that work on important projects in which they play an important role are usually motivated.

Professionals know how to organize themselves. Mathieu Weggeman wrote a great book on that. Professionals don’t have to be managed. There is also a principle in the Agile Manifesto that talks about that:

“The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams.”

Professionals don’t need to be managed, but they need to be led. Leadership is not management. The manager is a 20th century invention. The concept of the manager comes from the ideas of Frederick Taylor on how to best organize a factory: with workers as resources that don’t need knowledge and skills and a manager who is the only one with knowledge and oversight and the only one that can make decisions. This model is the dominant model in organizations of the old world. Even with smart knowledge workers, the manager still holds the authority to make decisions. The authority is at the top. But not in Agile.

In Agile, it works best if you delegate authority as far down as you can. Completely flip the authority game upside down. The people actually building the products know best so they should make the decisions. The Product Owner is only there to serve, to make decisions as a service if that is needed. If the direction and priorities are clear, the how is up to the team: self-organizing.

Why is delegating authority so important?

Delegating authority requires trust. That is difficult if you want control, if you think you know better, if you are insecure. But what you get back is performance. High performing teams are made up out of people who are motivated and work well together. Delegating authority helps develop the capacity of others and makes them feel valuable to the organization. It also encourages job satisfaction through a sense of shared responsibility. People will take on as much authority as they can handle, not more. And the more you trust them, the more authority they can take on. One of the most important roles of the Product Owner is to encourage ownership in all team members. Delegating authority is key to that. How can you feel ownership if you cannot make decisions? How can you feel engaged if someone who knows less about the subject is making all the decisions? Authority at the top is a model that no longer works.

I have been experimenting with delegating authority for a while, and these are some strategies on how to do that I found:

1. Have a clear outcome. The clearer it is what we want to achieve, the easier it is for people to made decisions because they know what it should amount to. This is not just having a strategy but being transparent and open about the why behind the strategy. Have frequent conversations about the strategy and the reasons and aspects.
2. Ask questions. Leadership is not about coming up with all the answers but about helping others by asking the right questions. The simplest question is: “What do you think we should do?”. If you then say “Okay, let’s do that.”, people are often surprised because they came with a question to you. But in my experience, people already know the answer and they just need empowerment. Asking a few questions will help to clarify the problem if needed.
3. Monitor the outcome. Making the wrong decision is not the biggest problem. Not learning from it is. If the decision made works out well, compliment. If the decision didn’t work out so good, reflect on it to get the learnings out of it.

You can delegate authority but not responsibility

One key principle I have is that it’s very beneficial for the team to delegate authority but leadership is about taking responsibility. If the delegation of authority leads to bad decisions, the leader is the one who takes full responsibility. If the delegation of authority leads to good results, the leader gives credit to the team. Credit goes to the team, blame goes to the leader.

In the end, it’s about the type of team you want to create. Do you want a team of people who do what you say? Or do you want a team of people who tell you what to do?

“When you delegate tasks, you create followers. When you delegate authority, you create leaders.”

— Craig Groeschel

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