From grimoire
Transfers task ownership from manager to direct report with clear scope, authority levels, and success criteria to prevent reverse delegation.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/grimoire:delegate-workThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
Transfer a task or responsibility to a direct report with clear scope, authority level, and success criteria — so the work moves completely without bouncing back through ambiguity or over-checking.
Transfer a task or responsibility to a direct report with clear scope, authority level, and success criteria — so the work moves completely without bouncing back through ambiguity or over-checking.
Adopted by: Oncken & Wass's 1974 HBR article "Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey?" is one of the three most-reprinted articles in Harvard Business Review history, establishing the principle that managers who do not delegate effectively become bottlenecks carrying their team's work; Hackman & Oldham's Job Characteristics Model (1976), the standard framework for work design at most large organizations, identifies autonomy as the primary driver of intrinsic motivation; Google's Project Oxygen manager effectiveness framework lists "empowers the team and does not micromanage" among the top manager behaviors Impact: Gallup's meta-analysis (2015) found that delegating CEOs — those who excelled at delegating — generated 33% greater revenue than non-delegating CEOs in a study of 143 CEOs at Inc. 500 companies; Hackman & Oldham's field research (1976, replicated extensively) found that autonomy — the degree to which a job provides freedom and discretion — is the single strongest predictor of internal work motivation; managers who do not delegate accumulate work until they become the team's bottleneck, reducing throughput and developing no one Why best: Delegation failures trace to three causes: (1) unclear scope — the employee takes over work outside the intended boundary; (2) unclear authority — the employee brings every decision back to the manager (reverse delegation); (3) unclear success criteria — the employee completes the task but delivers something the manager considers wrong; all three are cured by explicit upfront definition, not by better follow-up
Sources: Oncken & Wass, Harvard Business Review (November 1974); Hackman & Oldham "Motivation Through the Design of Work" (Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 1976); Appelo "Management 3.0" (Addison-Wesley, 2010); Gallup "State of the American Manager" (2015)
Delegate tasks where:
apply-situational-leadership to assess readinessDo NOT delegate:
Unclear scope is the most common delegation failure. Before handing off, answer these in writing or in conversation:
What exactly is being delegated?
"Lead the Q3 customer migration project from kickoff through go-live."
What is NOT included?
"Budget decisions above $10k require my sign-off. Changes to the migration
timeline that affect external commitments need my awareness before communication."
What are the deliverables?
"A kickoff deck shared with me by May 1, weekly status updates to the team,
a go-live report within one week of completion."
Underdefined scope leads to the employee either over-reaching (taking on things they shouldn't) or under-reaching (constantly asking permission for things they should own).
Most delegation failures occur here. Tell the employee explicitly what decisions they can make without you and what requires your involvement. Use a clear framework:
| Level | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 — Inform | Make the decision, then tell me | "Decide the project schedule — let me know what you landed on." |
| Level 2 — Consult | Consult me before deciding | "Before you commit the team to a timeline externally, run it by me." |
| Level 3 — Recommend | Bring me a recommendation, I decide | "Bring me a vendor recommendation with your rationale — I'll make the final call." |
Assign authority levels to each significant decision type within the delegated scope. Leaving authority level ambiguous guarantees reverse delegation — every decision comes back to the manager.
State clearly what "done well" looks like:
"This project is a success if: (1) all 200 accounts are migrated by August 15
with zero data loss, (2) customer satisfaction score on the migration process
is ≥ 8/10, (3) we document the runbook so future migrations can run without me."
Success criteria allow the employee to self-assess without constant manager input, and give both parties a shared basis for evaluation at the end.
Define upfront when you will check in, and what you expect to see at each point. This is different from checking in whenever you feel anxious.
"I'd like a brief status at our weekly one-on-one through the project,
and a heads-up if you hit a blocker that changes the timeline or scope.
Otherwise, I'll trust you to run it."
Pre-defined milestones are the agreed boundary between oversight and micromanagement. Ad-hoc check-ins beyond the agreed cadence signal distrust and undermine the delegation.
Reverse delegation occurs when the employee brings the problem back to the manager for a decision that is within their delegated authority. Common form: "I'm not sure what to do here — what do you think I should do?"
The correct response is not to answer the question. Instead:
"That's within your authority on this project. What are your options?
What would you do?"
If they genuinely don't know, coach them through it (see apply-grow-coaching). If they know but lack confidence, affirm their authority: "You've got this — what does your judgment say?"
Every time you solve a problem that belongs to a delegate, you reclaim that monkey. Over time, the manager's desk is covered in monkeys that should be owned by the team.
After the work completes, debrief what the employee learned — not just whether the outcome was good:
"Looking back at how you ran that project — what worked well? What would
you do differently? What did you learn that you'll apply to the next one?"
This closes the development loop. Delegation without debrief produces output but not growth.
apply-situational-leadership to assessnpx claudepluginhub jeffreytse/grimoire --plugin grimoireDetermines how much direction vs. support to give a direct report on a specific task, matching management style to development level.
Activate for: delegate, delegation record, handoff, delegation brief, follow-up, delegation quality, assign to, hand off to, delegation tracking, who should handle this, delegate this to, open delegations, what have I delegated, delegation audit. NOT for: basic task CRUD (use official productivity plugin task-management), brain dump prioritisation (use task-intelligence).
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