What to Delegate to AI vs. What to Keep

What this is for

You're not short on AI tools. You're short on a rule for when to use them. This is for the moment you're staring at a task and genuinely don't know if reaching for AI is smart delegation or a way to avoid doing your actual job. Fifteen minutes gives you a rule you'll use for years, not a prompt you'll use once.

Before you start

Two lines carry this whole document, so here they are first:

1. Anything you'd have to defend in a room, you keep. If you'd be embarrassed to say "the AI decided this," it doesn't get decided by AI. Drafted by, fine. Decided by, never.
2. Drafting quietly becomes deciding. The most common failure isn't delegating the wrong task; it's delegating a draft and then letting the draft's framing, tone, and emphasis become the decision because editing felt like enough oversight.

Everything below is machinery for applying those two lines quickly.

The framework

Hand over: volume, structure, first drafts, translation, formatting.

• Volume: anything you'd do the same way ten times. Twelve reviews with the same format, fifty emails needing the same kind of reply, a spreadsheet of similar entries.
• Structure: turning chaos into a known shape. Notes into an outline, a transcript into a memo, a rambling brief into a table.
• First drafts: the blank page, not the final page. A first pass at a document you'll heavily edit anyway.
• Translation: converting between formats or audiences you already understand. Technical detail into an exec summary, a policy into plain language, data into a narrative.
• Formatting: the mechanical layer. Slide layout, table structure, consistent headers, cleaning inconsistent data entry.

Keep: stakes, taste, relationships, judgment calls, and anything you'd defend in a room.

• Stakes: if being wrong costs real money, a relationship, or someone's job, you make the call, even if AI drafts the language.
• Taste: the decision about what's actually good, not just correct. AI can generate five options; you pick the one that's right for this audience, this moment, this person.
• Relationships: anything where the value is that it came from you specifically. A personal thank-you, a hard conversation, a reference call.
• Judgment calls: decisions with no clean right answer, where your years of pattern-matching are the entire point of asking you and not someone else.

The test that cuts through most edge cases: could a competent junior person do this well if you gave them the same instructions? If yes, it's probably volume, structure, or formatting; delegate the drafting. If the answer is "no, because it requires knowing things only I know or relationships only I have," keep it.

The line moved in 2026, so name it

This framework was easy when AI only drafted. Current tools also execute: an agent can run a multi-step research task, work across your files, update systems, and complete bounded workflows without you touching each step. That doesn't change the framework; it raises the stakes on applying it, because "hand over volume" now includes handing over sequences of actions, not just paragraphs. Two adjustments:

• Delegating execution needs tighter scoping than delegating drafting. "Draft replies to these 30 emails for my review" is volume work. "Reply to these 30 emails" hands an agent your voice and your relationships in one instruction. The review step is what keeps execution on the delegate side of the line.
• The defend-it-in-a-room test now covers actions. "The AI sent that" is a worse sentence to say out loud than "the AI wrote a draft I approved." If an agent acts on your systems, you own the action exactly as if you'd clicked it.

The framework on real tasks

Twelve tasks from a VP-level week, pre-classified. Disagree with any of them and you've found where your judgment differs from the default, which is the point:

Task	Verdict	Why, in one line
Board deck first pass from the numbers	Delegate	Structure work; the narrative choice stays yours (Board Deck Builder)
The "so what" slide title on that deck	Keep	That's taste and stakes in one sentence
Comp calibration across your team	Keep	Stakes, fairness, and a decision you defend in a room
Formatting the headcount model for finance	Delegate	Pure formatting
Vendor termination email	Partial	AI drafts the language; you own the decision, the timing, and the send
QBR narrative from the quarter's data	Partial	Delegate the assembly and structure; the honest read on why the quarter went sideways is yours
Candidate debrief synthesis (4 interviewers' notes)	Delegate	Structure and translation; the hire/no-hire is a different task
The hire/no-hire call	Keep	Judgment, stakes, and legally yours anyway
Layoff notification	Keep	Relationship and stakes; a template here costs you the team's trust
Meeting transcript into decision memo	Delegate	The definitive structure task (Meeting-to-Memo)
First draft of the annual strategy doc	Partial	Delegate the blank page; the bets you're making are the job
Weekly status roll-up from team inputs	Delegate	Volume plus structure, every single week

The decision card

The whole framework, sized to screenshot or paste wherever you look when deciding:

DELEGATE OR KEEP: FIVE QUESTIONS

1. Would a competent junior do this well from my instructions?
   Yes -> lean delegate.
2. If it's wrong, does it cost money, trust, or someone's job?
   Yes -> keep the decision; AI drafts at most.
3. Is the value that it came from ME specifically?
   Yes -> keep.
4. Would I defend "AI decided this" in a room?
   No -> keep the decision.
5. Am I delegating a draft, or quietly delegating the decision?
   Be honest. The draft is allowed to inform you, not decide
   for you.

Hand over: volume, structure, first drafts, translation, formatting.
Keep: stakes, taste, relationships, judgment.

Two prompts to apply the framework

Prompt 1: Audit your own week to find delegable volume work

Use either model.

ROLE: You are a time-management consultant helping me find tasks in
my week that are volume, structure, or formatting work I'm doing
manually.
CONTEXT: Below is a rough list of what I did this week, in no
particular order.
MY WEEK: [PASTE YOUR WEEK, e.g. Wrote 8 similar client update emails.
Built a board deck from scratch. Had a hard conversation with a
vendor about a missed deadline. Reformatted a spreadsheet for
finance. Interviewed a candidate. Drafted 3 versions of the same
proposal for different clients.]
CONSTRAINTS: For each item, classify it as Volume, Structure, First
Draft, Translation, Formatting, or Keep (stakes/taste/relationship/
judgment). Do not reclassify something as delegable just because it
was tedious. Tedious and high-stakes still means Keep.
OUTPUT FORMAT: A table with columns Task, Classification, and a
one-line reason. End with a short list of the top 3 I should
delegate next week.

Prompt 2: Pressure-test whether a specific task should be delegated

Use either model.

ROLE: You are a skeptical advisor helping me decide if a specific
task is safe to delegate to AI.
CONTEXT: The task: [DESCRIBE IT, e.g. writing the layoff notification
email to a team of 6 people, using talking points from HR]. Why I'm
considering delegating it: [YOUR REASON, e.g. I hate writing these
and AI drafts faster than I do].
CONSTRAINTS: Answer honestly, not reassuringly. Apply this test: if
this went wrong, would I have to explain in a room why an AI wrote
it? If yes, tell me plainly to keep it and explain what part,
specifically, AI can still help with (drafting language) versus what
I must own (the decision, the delivery, the judgment about tone for
this specific team).
OUTPUT FORMAT: A verdict (Delegate, Delegate Partially, or Keep) with
one sentence of reasoning and, if partial, exactly which piece is
safe to hand over.

Where this goes wrong

• You delegate the drafting and let that quietly become delegating the decision. A drafted layoff email is fine; letting the draft's tone decide how you actually deliver the news is not. Reread anything high-stakes as if you wrote it cold, not as an edit pass on the AI's version.
• You keep everything because letting go feels like losing control. Volume and formatting work don't build your reputation; the judgment calls do. Hoarding the volume work just means less time for the parts that actually need you.
• You use "it's faster if I just do it myself" as the test. Speed isn't the question. The question is whether a wrong answer costs something real. Slow-but-safe volume work is still delegable; fast-but-risky judgment work still isn't.

One team note: once you've drawn this line for yourself, your team needs the same line drawn for them, which is a policy question. The One-Page AI Policy is that document.

The 2-minute version

Ask: could a smart junior person do this well from my instructions? If yes, it's volume, structure, draft, translation, or formatting; hand it over. If the honest answer involves "because only I know" or "because it's my relationship," keep it, and let AI draft the language, not the decision. Keep the decision card where you'll see it.

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