Many leaders see delegation as a weakness. They say to themselves, "If I could do it myself, why hand it off?"
What's the result? A plate so full that everything on it suffers. Tasks the leader could have done at a 10/10 were getting done at a 5/10 — because he/she was stretched across too many of them at once.
Here's what we teach: Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you're the BEST person to do it. If you delegate a task to someone, the likelihood is that they deliver an 8/10. That 8/10 beats a distracted, overloaded 5/10 every single time.
In Lean manufacturing (TPS), we call this the waste of Non-Utilized Talent — putting the wrong person on the job and leaving real capability on the table. It applies to leadership just as much as it applies to the factory floor. The highest-performing leaders we know aren't the ones doing the most. They're the ones who've figured out what only they can do — and ruthlessly protected that space. Everything else? Delegated. Outsourced. Eliminated. What's the task you're still holding onto that you know you should let go — and what's stopping you?
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