The short version
- Before you leave, sort every decision that could come up into three columns: what can wait, what a named person decides, and what genuinely needs you.
- The third column should be short. If it is long, you are not on holiday, you are working remotely with a worse desk.
- A named person with a written limit decides. "Use your judgement" is not delegation, it is an invitation to check with you.
- Write what happens if they cannot reach you. That single line prevents most of the calls you would otherwise get.
Most leave plans cover tasks and ignore decisions. Someone is named to answer the inbox, someone else covers the standup, and then on Wednesday a client asks for a discount and everything stops, because no task list anticipated that and no one is sure they are allowed to say yes.
"They did not want to bother me, so they waited nine days. The deal went quiet."
The fix is a single page written before you go, and it takes about forty minutes.
The three column list
Open a page and write three headings: waits, delegated, needs me. Then go through your last two months and your next month and list every decision that plausibly comes up. Client discounts. Hiring. Scope changes. Refunds. Spending. Publishing. Escalations. Put each one in a column.
| Decision | Column | Written as |
|---|---|---|
| Refund under 500 euros | Delegated | Priya decides. No cap on count. |
| New supplier contract | Waits | Nothing signed before the 30th. Tell them so. |
| Discount above 15% | Needs me | Message me. If no reply in 24h, hold at 15%. |
| Hiring offer | Needs me | Message me. Candidate told the date up front. |
The value is not in the list being complete. It is in the team having seen the shape of your thinking, so that the decision you did not anticipate gets handled by analogy rather than by waiting.
Column one: what can wait
This column is larger than people expect and it is the cheapest to fill. Anything irreversible and non urgent belongs here. Contracts, structural changes, anything that would be embarrassing to undo.
The important part is telling people in advance rather than letting them discover it. A supplier told in week one that nothing will be signed until the 30th is fine. A supplier who learns it on day nine after chasing twice is not. One line in an email before you leave does the whole job.
Column two: a named person with a limit
Two components, both required. A name, not a team. A limit, in a number or a boundary.
"Priya handles refunds" is incomplete, because at some size Priya will check with you anyway, and the size at which she checks is not a number either of you has agreed. "Priya decides refunds up to 500 euros, and above that it waits for me" is complete, and Priya will not message you about a 200 euro refund.
Tell each named person individually. A group message announcing four delegations gets skimmed, and the person holding the authority does not fully register that they hold it. A direct message does. The same principle applies to areas rather than decisions in the decision authority map.
Column three: what needs a call
Keep this short. Three to five items for a two week absence is healthy. More than that and you have not taken leave.
For each one, write the fallback: what happens if you do not reply within a stated window. "Message me. If no reply in 24 hours, hold at 15% and tell them I will confirm on my return." Without that line, every item in column three becomes a person waiting indefinitely and probably texting your partner.
Also state the reaching mechanism once and precisely. Not "message me if it is urgent", which every human interprets differently. Something like: one named person may call, on this number, for these three things.
The context that makes column two work
Delegation fails less on authority than on context. Priya has the limit, but she does not know that this client already had a goodwill credit in March, or that the last discount to this account was tied to an annual commitment. So she asks, because asking is safer than deciding blind.
That context is current state, and current state is exactly what no policy document holds. This is what StandIn is built for. Your daily brief already records what moved, what is open, what is blocked and what is next, mostly drafted from the work itself. While you are away, your StandIn answers from that brief, in your words, with a source under every answer. It never guesses, and when the answer is not in the record it says so and names who to ask. Priya can find out what happened with that client in March without waiting for your evening. The judgement stays hers, and the information she needs to use it is not sitting in your head on a beach. See how it works when people are not online.
Common Questions
What if someone makes a call I would not have made?
Back them publicly and adjust the limit privately afterwards. Overruling a delegated decision once teaches the whole team that the delegation was decorative, and you will get every question back.
Should I set up an emergency channel?
One route, one named person, one written definition of emergency. Multiple routes mean the definition of urgent drifts, and it drifts towards everything being urgent.
How is this different from a normal delegation of authority?
It is time bounded, which is what makes people willing to do it. A permanent transfer of authority is a bigger conversation. Two weeks with a written end date is easy to agree and often becomes permanent once everyone sees it worked.
Does this work for a founder with no leadership team?
Yes, and the columns shift. More lands in "waits", and the important work is telling clients and suppliers in advance which things will pause. Stated pauses are rarely a problem. Silence is.
When you're off, your StandIn is on.
It answers your teammates' questions from work you've already done, in your words, with a source under every answer.