When I was a CHRO, I started noticing how many emails began with “Just wanted to check with you before I…” One month I flagged every one of them, and the total surprised me.

Most of them were reasonable questions from capable people. A manager wanted to know whether she could approve a schedule change for a caregiving situation, someone else asked whether a small training request fit the budget, and another wondered whether a policy applied to a situation we had not quite anticipated. I answered each one quickly and felt helpful, and every answer taught my team to send the next question to me as well.

When I finally sorted that month of emails, a pattern showed up. Many of the decisions were already within my team's authority, but nobody had ever said so clearly. Others came to me because the last time someone made that call on their own, it went badly and they did not want to repeat the experience. A smaller group truly needed my judgment, and those were getting less of my attention because of everything else in the queue.

Escalations like these slow a team down and wear out the person at the top. They usually trace back to unclear authority, missing guidelines, or a lack of confidence, and each of those calls for a different fix. I would even joke with my team that I was not that important and they could make the decisions themselves!

AI can help you see the pattern. Give it a sample of the requests that reached you over the past month or two, and it can group them by type, show how often each comes up, and suggest which ones could be handed back with a clear guideline, which need some training first, and which should stay with you. It can even draft the decision guidelines your team would need.

Deciding how much authority to give, and to whom, stays with you. You know your people, your risks, and where a mistake would be costly, and those factors should shape every line on the map.

Today's brief helps you find the decisions that keep landing on your desk and decide which ones to give back.

Let's go raise your AIQ.

Every Master Prompt in AIQ with Paul is written as an AIQ Brief. Each section answers a question AI needs answered before it can do good work for you.

Context tells AI what the situation is and who the work is for. Intent says what the result must accomplish, and Constraints list what cannot change or is off limits. Output describes what good looks like, and Check names what AI should show you and what you will verify before you use the result.

Fill in the brackets, run the brief, and treat the Check section as your to-do list once AI responds.

Take your skills beyond the brief. In my AIQ Advantage™ program, I teach working professionals how to build briefs into reusable workflows, check AI output before it goes out under their name, and decide where AI fits in their work. Learn more at AIQAdvantage.com

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