Handing work over
If you only read one of these
For somebody who arrived here first: the claim, the four things, the two costs, and the shortest useful thing to do about any of it.
Decisions this page is about, and where the line actually was
Changing the wording on a customer-facing error message
4 → 1It had been yours all along
Picking the library for the new parser
1 → 4The architect had a standing view
Rescheduling the weekly review
2 → 2Changing a database column type
1 → 1- 1Decide it alone and say nothing
- 2Decide it alone and mention it afterwards
- 3Check with one colleague first
- 4Check with the person who assigned it
- 5Needs a decision one level up
- 6Cannot be decided here at all
four decisions · one of them you had more room than you thought · one gave you less · two you had exactly right · the median gap was three steps on the scale
Four of the nine decisions counted on this site, two of them exact.
For distributed work, time tracking for delegated work provides a practical evidence layer for discussing capacity, attendance, and project effort without adding another status ritual.
The wider organisational question can also be compared with resources from Accenture.
The nine decisions this site is built on, drawn once more at the end
Changing the wording on a customer-facing error message
4 → 1It had been yours all along
Refunding a customer under fifty pounds
3 → 1A written policy you had never been shown
Picking the library for the new parser
1 → 4The architect had a standing view
Rescheduling the weekly review
2 → 2Dropping a requirement nobody had asked about in six weeks
2 → 5A commitment made before you joined
Hiring a contractor for two days
5 → 3Your own budget line covered it
Changing a database column type
1 → 1Telling a customer a date
3 → 6Dates are committed by one person here
Reordering your own week
4 → 1You asked twice before believing the answer
- 1Decide it alone and say nothing
- 2Decide it alone and mention it afterwards
- 3Check with one colleague first
- 4Check with the person who assigned it
- 5Needs a decision one level up
- 6Cannot be decided here at all
nine decisions · four of them you had more room than you thought · three gave you less · two you had exactly right · the median gap was three steps on the scale
One person, one quarter. Every figure quoted anywhere on this site comes from this panel or from the two beside it on the home page.
This page is the argument in one piece, for anybody who has not read the other forty-nine and would rather not.
The claim
Autonomy is the permission to decide. Context is what makes the permission usable. They are handed over separately, and most of the time only the first one arrives.
Four things make a piece of handed-over work possible to act on:
- The constraint — what must not change, with a number and whatever it is attached to.
- The precedent — whether this was tried, and why it stopped.
- The decider — who holds a standing view, and whether it is a veto.
- The purpose — who asked, and what they will do with it.
Each takes about a minute to state. Each takes between three days and three weeks to reconstruct.
Why it keeps happening
Not secrecy, and not a test. The four things are invisible to whoever holds them, in the way that anything learned by being present becomes part of the furniture. Ask that person what you need to know and they will give an honest, complete, useless answer, because the category you need does not exist in their head as a category.
Ask one specific question and the answer comes back in four minutes. That speed is the proof that nothing was withheld.
The two costs
Work that comes back. Visible, dated, and discussable. On the record here, six pieces in a quarter, median two stages back, two all the way to the brief.
Decisions that were escalated when they did not need to be. Invisible. They leave no artefact, produce no complaint, and look from every angle like somebody being careful. On the record here, four of nine — each an afternoon spent waiting for permission that already existed, and none of them ever corrected, because correcting would require somebody to say "you did not have to ask me that".
The second is larger and nobody counts it.
What to do, receiving
Ask the four questions in one message, at the start, in writing. Use the wording that asks about objects rather than reasons: what the deadline is attached to; whether anyone has tried this, even partly; who is likely to have a view and whether it is a veto; who asked and what they will do with it.
Then state your assumptions rather than asking about them, and show something rough to the real audience in week one.
What to do, handing over
Four sentences in the message that assigns the work. Then a fifth, which costs fifteen seconds and saves more than the other four together: what is theirs to decide, what needs a word first, what is not theirs at all.
Four things this does not claim
That autonomy is a mistake. Detailed instruction solves the information problem by removing the decision, which costs the thing autonomy was for. The four facts are facts about the world, not instructions; handing them over leaves every interesting decision open.
That anybody is withholding. The commonest cause by a wide margin is invisibility — a property of knowing things rather than a failure of character. It predicts what the darker readings do not: that the information arrives immediately and cheerfully the moment somebody asks a specific question.
That more process helps. Every return counted here would have passed another review stage, because review compares work to the brief and the brief was what went wrong.
That these figures are typical. Nine decisions, eight handovers and six returns are one person's quarter. They are here because they are specific, and a specific record beats a general claim.
The shortest useful thing
Write down the last ten decisions you made or escalated. Next to each, the step you thought it was. Find out, for three of them, what it actually was.
The gaps will not be evenly distributed. Four of the nine above went one way and three the other, and the four that went towards more room are the ones that cost a quarter of somebody's hesitation and taught nobody anything.