82% of hiring managers admitted they saw the warning signs during interviews—and hired anyway. Within 18 months, 46% of those new hires failed. The shocking part: 89% of failures were attitudinal, not technical. This episode dismantles everything you think you know about delegation. We debunk the 70% rule (zero empirical validation—it's one consultant's intuition from 2014), examine Brian Chesky's Founder Mode experiment at Airbnb ($4.1B revenue, 50% EBITDA margin), and reveal the cross-cultural reversal where empowerment actually hurts performance in high power-distance cultures. Then we rebuild with five research-backed protocols: hiring for learning agility (ρ = 0.74 with leader performance—virtually uncorrelated with IQ at r = 0.09), calibrated delegation based on decision reversibility, the OPPTY framework for tacit knowledge transfer, cultural adaptation using power distance, and selective founder mode. Read the full research report at https://research.yuda.me/podcast/episodes/algorithms-for-life/ep3-how-to-delegate/report.md
Key Sources:
• Leadership IQ - 3-year study of 20,000+ new hires across 312 organizations
• De Meuse et al. - Learning agility meta-analysis (20 field studies, ρ = 0.74)
• Wasserman (2008/2012) - Founder's Dilemma: 50% replaced by year 3, Rich vs. King tradeoff
• Robert et al. (2000) / Eylon & Au (1999) - Cross-cultural empowerment reversal studies
• Antonakis et al. (2010/2014) - 66-90% of leadership studies fail causal standards
