Safe to delegate
- Research and background gathering
- Pulling and cleaning data
- Organizing notes into something readable
- First-pass analysis and summaries
This is the work that eats your week and rarely requires you specifically. Hand it over and take the hours back.
Keep for yourself
- Where the money goes
- Which direction the creative takes
- What you say yes and no to
- Anything a customer will judge you by
AI can flag an opportunity, surface a pattern, or warn you that a channel is slipping. Useful. What you do about it is a business decision, and it should be made by someone who understands the business.
Write the line down
This sounds fussy until you've watched it happen. Without a written line, delegation creeps one small decision at a time, and six months later something strategic got decided and nobody remembers approving it. Put it on a page, share it with your team, and revisit it when the tools change.
The bottom line
Delegate the gathering, keep the deciding, and be specific about which is which.