Peter back in his management philosophy, really believed that his job was about three or four decisions a year, and that was it. He’d basically enable and delegate to deputies that he trusted to make every other decision. He was basically just deciding who to promote, who to fire, and then about three really difficult decisions a year. Jack at least during my days at Square was a very hands-on executive and had a really deep understanding or mastery of all parts of the business, and really wanted to have an opinion or perspective on many things. He certainly was excited and enthused when executives could run with energy and proactively decide things, but he wanted to be deeply aware of what was going on

Excerpt from an interview of Keith Rabois I listened to a few months back. As Rabois says there are 2 kinds of managers:

  • Those who like to delegate and only take a few key decisions in a year.
  • Those who like to give their opinion and be deeply aware of everything.

As someone who had been on the Dorsey camp for a long, I have realized that the 2nd model does not scale. Because of that, I have started delegating most decisions to the front line over the last few months. Design decision? Ask the designer. Should we deploy this fix as a hotfix or should we wait till the next release? Ask the TL. TBH I knew that most decisions can be taken without my involvement. I was still okay taking them because no one wanted to take ownership and accountability of day to day decisions, and naturally, they moved them up to me. Now I just say “take the best decision you can, based on your knowledge. if something goes wrong I will handle”. Showing trust, and giving more ownership has made my life so easy. And freed up so much of my time. I highly recommend cutting down on the decisions you need to make, and only focus on high leverage activities, and type 1 decisions.