The Observer's Notebook

Why Founders Can't Delegate (And What's Actually Going On) Most founders who struggle to delegate have tried the obvious fixes. They've documented processes. Hired people. Read the books. Built the systems. And the work still comes back to them, or they take it back without being asked, or the hovering gets bad enough that it just makes more sense for everyone if they do it themselves. If you've been asking why you can't delegate effectively, the answer is probably not what you've been told. The delegation problem most advice gets wrong The standard diagnosis is one of three things: you don't trust your team, your systems aren't tight enough, or you haven't found the right people yet. These are real problems. They're just rarely the load-bearing issue. Most delegation failures are thinking failures. Not in the way that sounds like an insult. In the way that means the thing you're trying to delegate isn't finished yet. It's still a liv...