Keith Rabois on how to delegate effectively

December 19, 2025

In Keith’s view, founders should view themselves as “editors” rather than “writers” of their companies:

“Writers do most of the work — editors are not actually writing most of the content at any publication. And that should be true of your company. You shouldn’t be doing most of the work. And the way you get out of doing the work is you delegate. But the problem with delegating is that you’re responsible for everything. If you’re CEO or founder, there is no excuse . . . you’re responsible for every single thing. Especially when things go wrong. So how do you delegate but not abdicate? It’s actually a tricky challenge and both are sins.”

The first technique to delegate effectively is “Task-Relevant Maturity,” which Keith borrows from Intel co-founder Andy Grove:

“Task-relevant maturity is a fancy phrase for: Has this person ever done this before? The more they’ve done this exact same task before, the more rope you’re going to give them. And the more they’re trying something new, the more you’re going to instruct and regularly monitor them . . . the interesting implication is that no executive or CEO should have one management style. Your management style needs to be dictated by your employee. With one particularly person, you may be a micromanager because they’re low on this scale, and with another person you might be delegating a lot because they’re quite mature on this scale.”

The other technique Keith borrows from Peter Thiel. Create a 2x2 matrix of “conviction” and “consequence.”

“When you have low consequences and low conviction in your own opinion, you should absolutely delegate. Let people make mistakes and learn. On the other hand, when the consequences are extremely high and you have extremely high conviction that you’re right, you actually can’t let your junior colleague make a mistake . . . And the best way to do that is to explain your thinking. It’s easy to shortcut explaining ‘why’ when you’re very busy, but it’s important to try.”

If you constantly overrule your employees without explaining the “why,” you will burn social capital and lose trust.