Distributed Decision-making v Distributed Delegation v Delegated Decision-making

• Distributed decision-making is the practice of involving multiple stakeholders in the decision-making process
  • Collaboration seeks to gather diverse perspectives and insights, leading to more informed and well-rounded decisions
  • Distributed decision-making is often employed in situations where complex or multifaceted issues require a collective approach
  • Examples
    • Wikipedia is collaboratively created and edited by a community of users
    • Open-source software development decisions about the software's features and roadmap are made by a community of developers

• Delegated decision-making is the practice of a delegator assigning a decision to a subordinate or team members
  • Members utilize their collective knowledge and expertise
  • Delegates are granted authority to make the final call but delegator retains ultimate responsibility for the decision
  • Examples

A company forms a task force to develop a new marketing strategy

A government agency creates a board of experts to advise it on a new policy

A community group forms a committee to decide how to spend a grant

• Distributed delegation is the practice of entrusting authority and responsibility to individuals, crews, teams closer to the point of impact, potentially leading to faster and more responsive decision-making
  • Delegates are assigned specific tasks to complete
  • Delegator is more focused on centralized coordination
  • In general, distributed delegation is a more common practice than delegated decision-making because it is a less risky way to give away authority and responsibility
  • Examples

A company gives its employees the authority to approve customer discounts

A manager gives her team the authority to schedule their own work

A school gives its teachers the authority to develop their own lesson plans