Success Quote by Robert Half

Delegation, Robert Half suggests, is less a managerial technique than a moral posture. The line is engineered like a tidy office memo: plain language, a little rhyme of “works” and “works,” and a built-in tripwire for anyone tempted to treat delegation as a synonym for disappearance. Its intent is corrective. In a business culture that loves to praise “letting go” and “empowering others,” Half points out the dirty secret: delegation fails when it’s used to launder responsibility.

The subtext is suspicion of the absentee boss. “Provided” is doing the heavy lifting here, turning the quote into a conditional contract. You can hand off tasks, but you can’t hand off accountability. The delegator still has to set priorities, communicate clearly, secure resources, remove obstacles, and make the hard calls when the plan collides with reality. Half isn’t romanticizing hustle; he’s defending managerial labor as real labor.

Context matters: Half built a career in staffing and talent placement, industries that sit right on the fault line between “getting work done” and “getting credit for work.” He would have seen, repeatedly, how organizations try to solve structural problems by pushing them downward. The quote reads like a warning to executives who outsource pain while keeping prestige.

Why it works is its quiet sting. It flatters the competent leader (you, of course, are working too) while shaming the status-seeker who delegates as an escape hatch. In eight words, it reframes delegation from power to participation.