Latest / Lead With Clarity: Practical Insight for Senior Leaders / Move the Authority: Why Decisions Belong Where the Information Lives
Transcript
- Blake Holman: Welcome to Lead with Clarity. This is a space for leaders who want to grow without losing themselves in the process. Each episode is a short reflection on leadership, influence, and the inner work that shapes how we show up for others. It's not hype, not noise, just clear thinking for the journey of leading well. Today's episode is entitled Move the Authority Why Decisions Belong Where the Information Lives. Here we go. Think about the last time a decision sat on someone's desk longer than it should have. Not because anyone was lazy, but Not because the work wasn't important, because the information was down here and the authority was up there. And the two had to find each other before anything could move. That's not a people problem, that's a design problem. And it's one of the most expensive problems in organizational leadership today. David Marquette said it clearly. He said, Don't move information to authority, move authority to information. Six words in each half of that sentence. But the gap between them represents years of wasted organizational energy. He didn't say this from a classroom. He said it from a command room. He was the c captain of a nuclear submarine, the USS Santa Fe, one of the lowest performing vessels in the U.S. Navy fleet. What he discovered changed not just that ship, but how we think about what leadership actually is. When he took command, he encountered something most leaders encounter but rarely name: a crew that was capable but trained to wait, trained to ask. Trained to send information upward and wait for the answer to come back down. That's what the system had rewarded, so that's what the crew gave him. He started doing something counterintuitive. Instead of demanding better information faster, he started pushing decision rights down to the people who already had the information. He gave authority to those closest to the work. The results weren't immediate. Trust systems rarely are. But over time the Santa Fe became one of the highest performing submarines in the fleet. Not because the crew got smarter, but Because the structure stopped getting in their way. Here's where most leaders get this wrong. They hear push authority down and they think it means decentralization without discipline. They let go of the wheel before anyone else knows where the wheel is. That's not empowerment, that's abdication. The misread is treating this as a philosophy when it's actually a practice. It requires that you build competence before you distribute authority. It requires that decision rights are clear, not assumed. It requires accountability structures that replace the approval loops that you're removing. Authority without clarity is noise. Authority without competence is risk. Marquette wasn't handing over the keys. He was teaching people how to drive first. So the real question isn't whether to push authority down, it's whether your people are ready to receive it. And whether your systems are designed to support them when they do. Here's the frame the reframe I work through with leaders. Instead of asking Who should I involve in this decision? Ask, who already has the best information to make this decision? Those are not always the same person. And the gap between those two answers is exactly where organizational velocity gets lost. When you move authority to information, you're not giving up control. You're upgrading where control lives. You're making it faster, more accurate, and more trusted, because it's grounded in reality rather than filtered through it. Before your next leadership meeting, pull up the decisions currently on your plate. Go through them one by one. For each one ask, who is physically closest to this work? Who carries the most relevant context? Who would make a better decision here than I would if I gave them the authority to? You don't have to hand everything over today, but start with one. Push the authority down, give the person clarity on the decision rights, and watch what happens to both the outcome and the relationship. Marquette's idea is elegant in its simplicity and demanding in its execution. It asks leaders to do something that feels unnatural at first, to lead by reducing their own decision load, to earn trust by extending it, to demonstrate strength by acknowledging that the people closest to the work know things that you don't. That's not weakness, that's wisdom. The best leaders I've worked with didn't have all the answers. They knew where the answers lived, and they had the courage to send authority there. Don't move information to authority, move authority to information. And then get out of the way long enough to see what your people can actually do.