Delegation Loops

In my earlier essay The Ethosystem, I described a company as a living network of shared values and accumulated judgment. These shared understandings shape how employees interpret goals, resolve tradeoffs, and decide what quality looks like. AI has increased the pace and volume of work inside companies, which places greater pressure on the organization's ability to keep judgment connected to execution.

While companies attempt to document their values, decisions, and goals, in reality, the operators and decision makers of the company rely on their intuition of these over time. The most effective way for employees to glean the ethos of their company is through the information that is indirectly communicated through delegation and evaluation from their leaders.

Delegation Loops is an operating technique that creates a rapid feedback loop for delegation and evaluation of work. It is an operating technique that connects the ethosystem to the work of the company. It's the cycle through which the ethosystem is revealed to employees, refined over time and put into action.

The cycle has three parts.

Delegate

First is a leader's downward motion of delegation, which is an important expression of judgment. The leader clarifies what they want, which can range in scope and responsibility from acheiving a goal, to making a decision, to completing a task. The scope depends on the assignee's role and the leader's trust in their judgment. The employee assignee of the work not only gets a description of their leader's expectations, they also receive subtle but important information that is largely unspoken. Priorities, values, systems of thinking and decision criteria, aka the judgment of the leader is transmitted to employees through the act of delegation.

Convictional builds delegation directly into email, which is where most real work begins. Users can assign an email thread to a teammate. They can also bring new teammates into a discussion around email thread through tagging and in-context chat. This places delegation inside the flow of actual work, rather than scattering it across ad hoc tools. Convictional users also gain an "Assigned to me" inbox that keeps work to be done visible.

Surface

Second, the assignee surfaces up their work. They share deliverables, decisions, assumptions, and reasoning where others can follow along. The goal is continuous visibility. Teammates can understand how choices are made, what tradeoffs were considered, and where a project is headed.

This level of openness reduces misalignment and shortens the time between starting work and getting useful feedback. For this system to work, the company needs to develop a culture of psychological safety, where employees are unafraid of their work being judged. Leaders should model vulnerability and praise teammates who work in the open and seek the best outcomes regardless of authorship.

Beyond the work product itself, the judgment of the work assignee is indirectly conveyed up to leaders when their work is shared. Their interpretation of company goals and application of company values is interweaved into their work product.

Convictional makes surfacing work easier and in many cases automatic. With Convictional Research, employees can pull context from their inbox and meetings recorded by the Convictional meeting bot. The tool summarizes what they did, what decisions they made, and what progress took place. Employees work in public without friction. Leaders receive a genuine view of how work is unfolding.

Evaluate

Third, the leader evaluates the work. They assess alignment with company goals and relevance to the situation. Most importantly, they evaluate how well the work meets the company's quality bar. When they provide feedback on the work product they are directly addressing the output but in fact indirectly communicating how they would apply judgment differently. Good leaders develop trust with their teammates so that they can provide feedback beyond the delivered work, but on the judgment that led to it. What decisions were made, what criteria was used, what tradeoffs were made, are all great topics to cover during evaluation. Good leaders not only improve the work product, but improve their teammate's alignment to the company ethosystem.

Convictional supports this step through collaboration inside email threads, meetings and through our research feature, which can summarize individual progress, team progress, and project progress. Leaders can understand what is happening without relying on scattered updates or meetings. They can dip into the process mid-stream and provide timely feedback that aligns the work. Work stays connected to judgment as the loop continues.

Roger, our CEO, talked about this pattern in his Founder Mode essay. Founders define direction through the work they assign. They shape culture and maintain alignment by reviewing output directly and regularly. This rhythm keeps teams close to the expectations that matter.

Delegation Loops turns this rhythm into an organizational habit. Managers stay close to work as it happens, not only when it is finished. They guide, correct, and sharpen efforts early, which avoids drift and preserves coherence across the company.

Continuous Learning of the ethosystem

A written handbook can describe a company's values, but people do not learn an Ethosystem from documents alone. They learn it through observation and participation in real decisions. Delegation Loops create that learning environment. Every cycle reveals how employees think. Employees see what types of work receive praise, what counts as quality, what direction receives emphasis, and where leaders want people to focus next.

This continuous cycle teaches the Ethosystem in a living form. Delegation shows what matters. Surfacing shows how work is interpreted and reasoned about. Evaluation shows how quality and relevancy is judged. Over time, employees internalize these signals and begin to operate with the same instincts and can take on more company judgment responsibility and ethosystem authorship over time.

How AI Elevates Every Employee into a Leadership Role

AI systems now take on a large share of execution. This puts every employee at the top of their own Delegation Loop. Employees give instructions (delegate) to these systems through prompts. They review the results (surface). They iterate through multiple versions. They choose the final direction (evaluate). These are leadership behaviors. Every employee now participates in delegation and evaluation even if they do not hold a formal management title.

An organization of delegation loops

Companies will reorganize around delegation loops. The structure does not need to resemble a single formal hierarchy. Each loop is guided by the person who can apply the strongest judgment to the work being done, regardless of title or position. This environment requires employees who collaborate in the open, welcome feedback from many directions, and act as leaders within the domains where their judgment is strongest and unique.

The AI age is redefining what work is and how organizations coordinate to accomplish their goals. This shift marks the beginning of a new kind of organization, one built around judgment, clarity, and shared visibility. At Convictional, we're building a product for innovative teams to move fast and align in this new age.