Purpose
This protocol helps technical leaders distinguish between strategic delegation and cognitive abdication — especially when using AI systems or expert input in decision-making.
The core principle
Delegation is not abdication unless decisions are handed off without understanding. Shared reasoning is valid. Final accountability must stay with the human operator.
Checklist: are you delegating strategically?
- You define the context before asking
→ You’re framing the problem - You compare responses to your own hypotheses
→ You’re engaging, not offloading - You request structure, not decisions
→ You’re looking for scaffolding, not substitution - You revise and challenge the output
→ You’re reasoning with it, not deferring to it - You record the final choice and why it was made
→ You’re signaling ownership
These actions indicate intentional delegation with retained oversight.
Signs of cognitive refusal
- “Just tell me what to do”
- Lack of translation between advice and context
- Avoiding decisions to evade risk
- Using delegation to bypass complexity
- Defaulting to tool output as authoritative truth
These are signals that reasoning is being avoided, not distributed.
Reflection prompts
Use these during 1:1s or self-reviews:
- What decision am I actually making?
- What constraints or risks have I already mapped?
- Am I delegating due to overload, or am I avoiding ownership?
- Do I understand the logic behind the answer?
- If this fails, can I explain why I accepted the recommendation?
These questions surface whether you’re delegating to expand insight — or to shield from responsibility.
Example: working with AI systems
-
Strategic delegation:
“Help me analyze trade-offs in this architecture. I want to test my assumptions.” -
Cognitive abdication:
“Write the architecture for me. I don’t want to think about it.”
Delegation should reduce load, not bypass cognition. The goal is to shift from memory-bound work to system-level thinking. This is augmentation, not substitution.
Prompt AGI properly