Let’s be brutally honest.
If you’re still in the weeds of your business reviewing designs, giving feedback on social captions, checking Slack threads at midnight…it’s not because you’re a perfectionist. It’s because every time you tried to delegate, it came back half-done or half-wrong.
And so, like most founders scaling past $1M, you’ve developed a subtle resentment of delegation. You still do it. But deep down? You hate it.
Because delegation, as most founders experience it, is exhausting.
You’re not just assigning a task. You’re chasing updates, clarifying miscommunication, reviewing sloppy first drafts, and getting hit with “quick questions” from five different directions all while trying to stay focused on the high-leverage stuff only you can do.
So delegation becomes a trap. A productivity scam. A nice idea that never delivers.
But here’s the shift that changed everything for us at Shockwave, and it can change it for you too:
Delegation isn’t a task. It’s a system. And when you build that system right, you don’t just get time back, you get your brain back.
This isn’t about hiring another assistant or reading another blog post with “10 delegation hacks.” This is about reengineering how work moves through your business, so you’re not the bottleneck… and you’re not the janitor.
Let’s walk through how we got there and why most founders never do.
Why Most Delegation Breaks the Business Instead of Scaling It
Let’s start with a truth no one talks about: delegation doesn’t magically free up a founder’s time.
In fact, it usually adds work at least at first.
When Emma (our founder at Shockwave) tried to delegate early on, it nearly broke her. The way we were set up, everything she offloaded eventually came right back to her. First drafts. Slack updates. Confusing decisions. A never-ending game of “Hey, just circling back…”
Delegation was supposed to create space.
Instead, it created backflow…a flood of half-done, half-thought-through tasks that came boomeranging back with more questions than answers.
It didn’t matter how many people she hired, how talented they were, or how much she “trusted” them. The system was broken. Because there wasn’t a system. Just a founder surrounded by chaos, trying to keep the wheels on.
This is the moment most founders hit what we call the Delegation Death Spiral:
- You hand off work too fast (because you’re overwhelmed)
- The work comes back sloppy or unclear
- You jump back in and “fix it”
- Your team loses confidence (and stops owning outcomes)
- You stop trusting delegation altogether
- You start doing everything again
And the cycle repeats. Until you burn out or burn the business down.
That’s where we were. Until one simple change flipped the script.
The Buffer That Changed Everything
Saka, our Head of Ops, stepped in at the exact right moment.
But not the way most people “step in.” He didn’t ask for more tasks. He didn’t wait for instructions. He did what real operators do:
He looked at where the pain was and said, “Let me take that off your plate.”
At the time, Emma was drowning. Her entire day was a pileup of decisions she should never have been touching in the first place: giving feedback on internal slides, responding to DMs, reviewing funnels that weren’t even ready yet.
Saka realized the issue wasn’t workload but it was access. Too many people had direct access to Emma’s time, energy, and brain.
There was no filter between her and the chaos.
So Saka built one.
He created what we now call the Operational Buffer: a human firewall between the founder and the flood of tasks, updates, and requests coming from every corner of the team.
From that point forward, nothing reached Emma without going through him first.
Not because she didn’t care. But because her time had to be reserved for only the most high-leverage work.
Here’s how it worked:
- Designers sent Saka their work first. He reviewed, gave feedback, and tightened the assets.
- Copywriters sent draft funnels and campaigns to Saka. He aligned them with the vision.
- Team leads brought problems to Saka. He solved 90% of them and escalated only the 10% that actually required Emma’s input.
What this did was magical. It didn’t just give Emma time back, it gave her confidence.
For the first time in years, she could open her calendar and think. She could focus on clients. On strategy. On vision.
Not color palettes.
Why First Drafts Should NEVER Reach the Founder
Here’s one of the most painful but transformative rules we’ve ever implemented at Shockwave:
First drafts do not go to the founder. Ever.
This rule changed our company.
Before the buffer was in place, Emma would get pinged 20 times a day:
“Hey, can you take a look at this?”
“Quick thoughts on the deck?”
“Just a rough draft, but I’d love your feedback.”
What those messages really mean is:
“I haven’t done the work to think this through. Can you finish it for me?”
The second a founder is asked to review a half-done deliverable, they stop being a CEO and start being an unpaid editor.
And worse? It trains the team to rely on you for thinking.
If the people on your team know they can pass you something rough and expect you to clean it up, guess what? They’ll keep doing it. Because it’s easier. Because it works.
That’s why we created a rule: If it’s not final, it doesn’t get reviewed.
Every deliverable goes through at least one round of internal review before it hits Emma’s desk. That means:
- Peer feedback
- Team lead sign-off
- Context around what the deliverable is, why it matters, and what the decision point is
If it doesn’t pass that bar, it doesn’t go up the chain.
The result?
Emma only sees the top 10% of issues. The rest? Handled. Filtered. Cleaned.
This one rule alone gave her back hours every week. More importantly, it gave her back the mental clarity to lead the company instead of micromanaging it.
Systems > Control. Context > Commands.
Founders like control. We’re wired that way.
But control is not the same as leadership. In fact, too much control is what keeps most businesses stuck.
What we needed wasn’t more oversight. It was more ownership from the team, from the leads, and from the systems we built around them.
So we rebuilt delegation from the ground up. Here’s what that looked like.
The 5-Part Delegation System We Use (And You Can Steal)
1. Clear Briefs With Context
Every task begins with a clear brief that answers three questions:
- What’s the deliverable?
- What’s the deadline?
- Why does this matter?
No vague messages. No “can you just…”. No throwing a problem over the wall.
Context creates clarity. And clarity creates confidence.
2. Built-in Review Layers
Tasks move through at least two checkpoints before reaching the founder:
- Peer review for completeness
- Ops lead (Saka) for alignment and strategy
This stops weak work from climbing the chain and forces accountability at the source.
3. Decision-First Communication
We stopped training the team to bring problems. Now they bring decisions:
- “Here’s what I did.”
- “Here’s why I chose it.”
- “Here’s what I’m waiting on (if anything).”
When your team starts thinking like owners, delegation stops being a handoff. It becomes a transfer of authority.
4. Looms for Feedback
Feedback via Slack is a disaster. Too much room for misinterpretation, tone issues, and ping-ponging back and forth.
So we switched to Looms.
It’s fast. Human. And lets you explain your reasoning in 90 seconds instead of 9 Slack messages.
5. One Owner Per Task
If you start it, you finish it. Period.
We don’t let tasks bounce between five people or float in limbo waiting on the founder. Everyone is trained to close the loop not just do “their part.”
Final Thought: Delegation Is a Strategic Weapon
If you want to scale your business without scaling your misery, delegation isn’t optional..it’s foundational.
But if you’re delegating without a system… you’re not freeing yourself up. You’re setting yourself up.
The goal isn’t just to “get help.”
The goal is to build a flow a structure that filters noise, removes dependency, and protects your most precious resource: your focus.
Saka became that system for Emma.
He protected her calendar. He filtered decisions. He built trust through action.
And because of that, Emma got to be a founder again. Not a firefighter.
Want to Hear the Whole Conversation?
Emma, Saka, and Richard unpack this delegation shift in the podcast episode that inspired this post.
➡️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gXmGguD5qw
If you’re a founder scaling past $1M and delegation feels like death by a thousand Slack pings…This episode is your blueprint for operational freedom.