Running a team of nine without becoming the bottleneck
Delegation isn't a personality trait, it's a system. Six things I got wrong first.
The first time I led a team big enough to need delegation, I delegated tasks and kept the decisions. It felt responsible. It was the fastest way to become the slowest part of my own team.
Tasks are cheap to hand off. Judgement is the thing.
Handing someone a task and keeping the judgement means they still have to come back to you at every fork. You have not delegated the work; you have delegated the typing. The queue for your attention gets longer, not shorter.
What actually moves load off you is delegating the decision, with the context that lets someone make it the way you would — and then living with the version that is 85% of what you would have done.
If every path runs back through you, you did not build a team. You built a switchboard.
The context that travels
For each area I now try to write down the three things I would optimise for, the two mistakes I have already made there, and the one line I would defend in a review. That is usually enough for someone to make a call I can stand behind.
The uncomfortable part is that delegating judgement means being visibly wrong sometimes, in public, on decisions you did not make. That is the price. It is cheaper than the alternative, which is a team that can only move at the speed of your calendar.