Delegate
Definition
Give AI the work that consumes team capacity without requiring deep judgment: high-volume, low-risk, repeatable, draining, or chronically delayed tasks. Delegation is the operational entry point — it creates capacity for the work that actually needs humans.
What to Delegate
Delegation works best on work that is:
- Repetitive — the same structure every time, just different inputs
- High-volume — takes significant time precisely because there is so much of it
- Low-judgment — execution rather than decision-making
- Draining — work people avoid, delay, or find demoralizing
- Documented — AI needs enough context to produce usable output
Concrete examples: Meeting summaries and action item extraction · First drafts of communications and reports · Data cleaning and classification · Document comparison and gap analysis · FAQ generation and knowledge base updates · Basic research and market scanning · Status update compilation · Scheduling and calendar management
The Diagnostic Questions
Use these to find delegation opportunities in your own workflows:
- What consumes 20% or more of your team’s time but adds limited strategic value?
- What repeated, draining work can AI safely take off the plate?
- What is the lowest-hanging fruit you could pilot in the next 30 days?
The Elevator Operator Warning
Delegation is not about layering AI onto existing workflows. When elevators got buttons, the right response was not to hire a new person to press them — it was to redesign the system.
The same applies here: do not preserve roles, meetings, emails, or workflows just because they are familiar. If AI is handling the work that justified a step in the process, redesign the process. Delete what no longer creates value. Build the new operating model around what humans and agents can do together. See Do Not Create an AI Elevator Operator.
The Risk
Low-risk does not mean zero-risk. Delegated work still needs:
- Output standards — what does good look like?
- A review step — who checks before it goes external or becomes a decision input?
- A scope boundary — what must never be fully delegated, even if it looks routine?
Connections
Co-Create Innovate Tasks vs Jobs Do Not Create an AI Elevator Operator Six Strategy AI Leadership Framework
Sources
- Mollick and Mollick - Assigning AI — research on assigning AI roles in knowledge work
- [inferred synthesis from workshop teaching]
Tags: automation, operational layer, delegation, workflow redesign, capacity