Sessions with System & Soul

Hot Takes: Zuckerberg, AI, and the Ugly Truth About Delegation

• Benj Miller, McKenzie Decker • Season 1 • Episode 17

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Mark Zuckerberg recently said he doesn’t believe in delegation. In this Hot Takes episode of Sessions with System & Soul, Benj Miller and McKenzie Decker challenge that idea and explore what delegation really means for leaders scaling a business.

They unpack:

  • Why delegating only to “doers” limits innovation and growth
  • The difference between control and clarity in leadership
  • How AI is teaching founders the power of better prompts and constraints
  • Why true delegation develops thinkers, not just task managers

This episode blends leadership strategy, human insight, and real-world lessons founders can apply today.

Sessions is hosted by Benj Miller and McKenzie Decker

The best businesses aren’t just built on strategy, they’re built on soul.

If delegation is something you’re wrestling with, the System & Soul network has more than 50 certified coaches across the country ready to help founders and teams delegate with clarity and confidence.

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Benj Miller:

Hey, welcome back to Sessions with System and Soul, and with your host Ben Miller and McKenzie Decker. If you're confused, I'm the Ben Miller and this is the McKenzie Decker.

McKenzie Decker:

Hi, I'm McKenzie.

Benj Miller:

Hey. Hi. So this is one of my favorite episodes. We do, we, we take a look. We each bring a hot take and let the other person react to it. You wanna go first or you want me to?

McKenzie Decker:

Oh, I'm ready. I've been holding on.

Benj Miller:

Oh, go. All right. You're on the hot seat then.

McKenzie Decker:

All right.

Benj Miller:

What's your hot take?

McKenzie Decker:

I got a video of okay, let me, I wanna share it with you and then can you guys see my screen? Okay. So this is my hot take. We've got Little Mark Zuckerberg here giving advice on how to run a business ready.

Zuckerberg:

I basically don't believe in delegation. I think that there's this theory that a lot of people have, which is like, all right, the job of a leader is you hire people and you delegate things to them. My theory is there's so much going on across the company that I can't possibly get involved in all of it. So all these people are gonna have a ton of stuff that they're gonna do, but fundamentally, if there's a decision that I want to be involved with, I'm going to be involved in it. I don't, I just don't, I don't believe in delegating. Like it's if, and I think that's generally a. Good way for founders to operate. I think it's if you're running the company and you're on the hook for everything and there's something that's important at whatever level of detail in the organization, I don't get like the logic of saying I don't, I'm not gonna be involved in that now. You wanna be, you want to have humility and know that, like if you're diving into some decision, you may not have the most context immediately, but but I generally think that. You want to be able to just have the cultural expectation that things are not gonna be so hierarchical and like you're just gonna dive into whatever you want. I try to generally keep a bunch of time open so that way like stuff is pretty dynamic and like you wake up in the morning and you're like, okay, I need to work on these three things today and I wanna make sure that I have a block of time where I can go do that. Really frustrated and bad mood. If like my whole day is scheduled and there's like a thing that I know is really important and I like, don't get time to do it because I'm sitting in other things that are not the most important thing to be doing. It's like you do have too many days like that in a row and I just like explode.

McKenzie Decker:

Okay. I wanna hear what you think.

Benj Miller:

I think he's playing a little game of semantics.

McKenzie Decker:

I wanna hear what you think, but. Can I share what I thought when I first saw that?

Benj Miller:

Yeah. Yeah. Go. Why is this not? IM,

McKenzie Decker:

Immediately I'm like, I and I've watched it a few times now, but immediately I'm like, oh no. Like this doesn't work. And I, my first thought was like, I wonder. If we turn the camera on, if there's anybody that's on his team and they're sitting in that audience, I'd be so curious to know what their face is doing right now. I'd be so curious to know what the impact of that is on the people that he works with, because what I heard is that he's. Organized it in such a way that he can keep it flexible for himself and what he's comfortable with, but he may be cutting the knees off of the people that he's got in his organization. And so that was my that was my operator brain thinking. If I were advising him, I would say. Are you sure you understand the impact of, the dynamic that you've set up here? So I think, I also think that this is related to that whole like founder mode conversation that's been going on in the last year. And I do think that, there's the business when it was fresh and new and needed that founder to be in and out of everything. Yeah. But there comes a point where that doesn't make sense anymore. And I think I'm really surprised that he would even say that I, the knowing the size of. Of the company that he is running and the number of companies that he is running. I don't know, maybe, I'm not a billionaire, so I, to everyone's surprise, but I wonder if there's something I don't understand in it. But there's definitely something that stresses me out for every other business owner out there.

Benj Miller:

Let me tell you. What I think is happening here. Okay. I think this is mostly absolute bullshit. And he is trying to get a reaction. He is trying to be different. I'm some super founder, but do you have somebody that's responsible for developing code in your business? Yes. Okay. So you've delegated writing code in your business. Okay. So you believe in delegation? Yes, I do. Do you have a CFO in the business or do you do all the bookkeeping and fundraising and capital allocation in your business? Yeah, I have somebody that does that. So you've delegated it to them? Yes. So you believe in delegation? Yes. It just doesn't, the math doesn't math in what he's saying. So what is he trying to say? I think he's trying to say that I don't two things with the people that, that if I'm gonna hire someone, I'm gonna hire someone so capable that I don't have to tell them what to do. I want my chief growth officer. They're gonna tell me the strategy. Maybe I want some input. Maybe we have some collaboration, but it's not me telling them what to do to go execute. I wanna hire people smarter than me so that I don't have to air quotes, "delegate" the what to do. You've delegated the thing, but not like the strategy and the tactics. So I think that's part of what he's saying. And then there was another little snippet in there that I think he's also talking about. He doesn't meddle where he's not needed and wanted unless he's got something that he's like super passionate about. But it's once you have delegated it, he's not gonna micromanage it or come in and, ask for all the reports and details or whatever. He is gonna there's some trust there. So to your point though, like the dude probably has five or six. Administrative assistance and personal assistance so Absolutely. He's delegating stuff 24 7. There's just zero shot. So I think he's, I think he's, I understand what he is trying to say about trusting the people you hire, not meddling, not dictating what to do. I think that is a great leader to your point, early in a business, if you're in a stage one business. You're just not there unless you go raise a ton of money. You don't have a senior leadership team that has that capability. So you have to be in founder mode for some period of time. Even stage two, you're slowly taking those. Hat, the proverbial hats off and putting them on other people and to different levels of degrees, depending on the stage of the business. You may have somebody super capable. You may, some might have somebody that has potential and you've gotta play free safety, making sure that they're not making mistakes. So I think it's a great conversation. I think he. Trying to be more controversial than he probably already is.

McKenzie Decker:

Yeah. May maybe you're right. The other thing you said that I think is really key in all of it, and he said it too he used the word doers early on. He is talking about delegating tasks and. Calling, he was calling the people who are doing those task doers, and that's one mode of delegation. That's layer one. The one point, layer one is I give you the task and you go do the task you, but you just said in the that there is. Another layer of capability. I hire somebody who doesn't just do the task the way that I told them to. They can think about the task and they can strategically plan the task and they bring their ideas to the task. And that would be my concern or my question for. For him and for any business owner that wants to move from founder mode into something at, to a higher degree of effectiveness is are we letting people move from being, are we de, are we just delegating to doers or are we delegating to thinkers and people who can strategize and people who can have vision for their own department or for their own role.

Benj Miller:

Yeah. And then lead those people,

McKenzie Decker:

yeah, and I, that's where I think the question and the opportunity lies.

Benj Miller:

Yeah, man. Okay, so my hot take is actually somewhat related. Like we're in the same ballpark here.

McKenzie Miller:

Okay.

Benj Miller:

So this is an interesting little conversation, plot twist. I was listening to this podcast and I can share it. It's like an hour or something, 45 minutes. But they're talk, they're talking about,

McKenzie Miller:

at this point I have like over six hours of video, homework from you. So I'm not taking any more videos.

Benj Miller:

That is not true. That is an exaggeration. And this is one of them. So I'm not double dipping here. This is one of them. I am double dipping. This is from one of them that I shared with you, and it's really more focused on AI for like, how do you actually use it in a business and where's that, and stuff like that. So it's very AI driven, but he makes a comment in this. That I can't stop thinking about. He goes through an example of he's a developer. So when you ask the AI he was using go make this thing, it's gonna bring back like super mediocre results. But he is learned that he can create templates for the way he thinks. And his easiest example is naming convention. When you build something in the database, this is the naming convention that we need to use so that everything is consistent and makes sense also with everything else that they've built in the organization. And so he's got these templates. So if you take his templates for how he thinks, how he names things, what the expectation of the results look like, and feed that in with the prompt, now you get back almost perfect results. And he made this tiny comment in there about the managers of the future are going to be managing agents as much as they're gonna be managing people. But what I felt guilty of when he said that is that I do a better job managing agents right now than I do people. Because my prompt engineer, like I get what he's saying about engineering, a prompt engineering the template, engineering the success criteria. For an ai, I don't give people that level of input so that I can get the same results. There's all this stuff in my head that like maybe a good X, Y, Z would produce, but I've never taken the time to be really clear about that with the people that work for me, let alone the people that they hire and they hire. So there's so much we can learn, I think from about managing people. From the way that we're now learning how to manage agents.

McKenzie Decker:

That's really interesting. And I want I almost wanna ask you what. I'm gonna ask you why. Why do you think that is? Why do you think it's easier for you? I'm gonna just call it easier. I don't know if you'd say it's easier, but you've been more prone to figure out the prompting for the ai, but you've also just realized that maybe you're not leading people in the same with the same clarity. Like why do you think that is?

Benj Miller:

That's a great question. I think it's probably because I want to honor like the creativity and the input of the person doing the work. Oh. Versus I have no emotional attachment to the a I just need the AI to do the job. It's just there to do a job. But I want to give room for the personality and wiring and all the things that the human brings to it too. And I think there's a way to do both. We know that great creativity lies within constraints. And and all we're doing is giving this AI constraints. So if I think about it like that Hey, here's the constraints. But be all you to, figure out how to make it amazing within these constraints. That might be the answer. So I don't, the answer is I don't know. I'm convicted at this point by the awareness that. I've learned to do a better job through managing ais and agents, and so I'm hopeful that I can take that and start to apply it to the world of people.

McKenzie Decker:

It's a great insight. I think there's the other complication, I'm gonna make a generalization that the AI experts of the world may not like, but like in general, like AI you said is there to do a job. I look at all the agents, whether it's. Your chat, GPT or it's perplexity or whatever you claw, whatever you use, they're all the same. They all need that level of construct to work out the idea. So look at them as like clones of the same person. If you had one person that you just cloned over and over again, and you could give them the same information every time they would do the sa, they would provide a similar result. I think when we deal with people, we don't have that. They're not as homogenous, there's, people need different things out of the instructions or the prompt that you give them. And I think that's what's so hard about, I think it'll continue to be hard, whether or not we have ai, there's people who need. Ample ample instructions. And that's the most dignifying thing you can do to them is help them do it right the first time and be very clear about exactly what you're looking for. And there's other people, a k, a binge Miller, who, if I did that to, if I did that to you every day, you'd be like, get outta here. Leave me alone. Like I have my own ideas about how to do this. Like just tell me the, tell me where we're trying to go and I'll fill in the gap. Yeah. And so I think that's one of the. Complications of comparing those two things is like no one person that we lead needs the same type of leadership from us.

Benj Miller:

Let me Yes. And that I a hundred percent agree, like the personalities and different people. And you're right. I would be so stifled if you told me how to do my job. Just tell me what you need. And then there's people that really desire to do it right. So give them as much input as you can possibly give. What's interesting about what your example though is whether I use Claude or GR or chat BT or whatever or even any of the different models within those, I'm going to get different results even if I do put in the same input. So even the ais have their own like personality to them. And part of managing agents is knowing which agent do I give, which task? Which type of tasks to so I, again, I think we're learning, and this is just the infancy of all this, but I'm just challenged to do a better job leading and managing people because of the way I'm learning to lead and manage. I'll give you another example. So like building software with some of these no, like code by prompt tools that are out there. When I've tried to create the world's best product documentation for the whole thing of what I wanted to build, it usually does not go well. But when I figure out what the minimum viable product and what the core of it is and say build this. It does great. And then I'm like, okay, add, this does great, add this does okay. Fix it. So I'm wondering even in that, what is the lesson for managing people? And it's Hey, I have a big vision for where this is going. Here's exactly where we need to start. Let's get it to this. And then we will work on some iterations. I don't know, I don't, I definitely don't want to treat people like agents, right? That's definitely not the goal.

McKenzie Decker:

So

Benj Miller:

there, there's something to learn and something to figure out.

McKenzie Decker:

I think. Okay. Here's something you said it, and I think this might be part of the answer, is you said there's like a minimum viable clarity. I think whether it's an AI agent or it's a human being, there's a minimum viable clarity no matter who it is that we have to be mindful of. Yeah. You've got the minimum viable clarity, and then on top of that, we have to consider. Based on what you said, different models, different agents, different types of people who have different backgrounds and different personalities and different interests. We have to take that minimum viable clarity. Give it to all of them. Yeah. But then there is the nuance of managing. The differences in all of it. So there's the nuance of personality emotions is probably, we could probably talk for 30 minutes on dealing with em, emotions in leadership, but there's a, there's the human needs, the human emotions the ai, the way they've been designed to handle something in, in different ways. There's the human design that. Then requires us to think about the different ways that we need to provide that instruction or provide that, those what do you call 'em? Like gutters for someone?

Benj Miller:

Yeah. Constraints.

McKenzie Decker:

The constraints to do a good job. You said? Say that. What'd you say about creativity requires constraints.

Benj Miller:

It's really hard to be creative without constraints. So if you think about like my easiest example is architecture. Yeah, if you've got a really odd shaped lot or really sloped, or really setbacks, whatever it forces you to think creative creatively, how can I do this within these constraints. That's where like real creative. Energy comes from. Otherwise if you just build a really creative house on a, postcard lot in the middle of Oklahoma, you're like, Hey, cool, that's artistic or something, but you didn't have to solve a problem. Creativity comes from solving a problem. The problem gets more complex with the constraints, and so it's actually more fun and more creative to solve problems with more constraints. So yeah. All right. So my big takeaway from. The clip you shared is that you can't lead a business and not delegate, but there are good ways to delegate and bad ways to delegate, and we need to be strategic with that. What's your takeaway?

McKenzie Decker:

Yeah I think mine is this idea of there's minimum viable clarity. Regardless of who we're dealing with. And then there's also provide, there's providing healthy constraints so that whatever version of creativity they have, that they're able to address the problem in their unique way.

Benj Miller:

Yeah I could do these hot take episodes like all day. You're super fun.

McKenzie Decker:

Oh, we've got, I've got all kinds of YouTube I've got all kinds of folders set aside, so we'll get there.

Benj Miller:

Oh, all all right. Maybe we need to double those or something. Anyway, thanks for doing it. Thanks for listening. Out there. Appreciate you, you joining us and hope we're contributing to your life, your personal development, your leadership development and your organizational development. So if we are, give us a thumbs up, a a rate or a share, and we'll see you next week for another session. I.

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Benj Miller

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McKenzie Decker

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