Leadership beyond the prompt
Who accepts
the work?
Give the next agent assignment a finish line someone can actually judge.
Last week's No-Code CAIO put five questions into a delegation brief: outcome, owner, authority, evidence and blocker. One of those questions deserves more room. Who receives the result, and what will that person actually do before accepting it?
A name in the recipient field gets the work to somebody. Acceptance asks that person to make a judgment. I want that judgment visible before the agent starts, while there is still time to change the assignment.
Beyond the Chat Box
Stay with the handoff.
The planning conversation behind last week's edition kept returning to evidence. An agent could help make the proposal explicit; I still had to decide whether the commitment fit. That same responsibility follows the work all the way to the review.
Imagine assigning an agent a comparison of two tools. This is a hypothetical assignment, not a product recommendation. A polished table arrives, but one price has no source and a feature claim comes from an old announcement. The reviewer needs a way to mark those gaps before the comparison informs a purchase.
Let's be real: attractive formatting makes this easier to miss. Put the source and its check date beside the claim. If a fact could not be verified, say so where the decision depends on it.
A useful acceptance note
For that comparison, the brief might say: return the two options with current source links, unresolved questions and the tradeoff each option creates. The human reviewer decides whether the evidence is sufficient for the next conversation. The agent has no authority to buy either product.
Due
Give the work a deadline and a review time. A result that arrives after the decision may have little value.
Bounded
Specify the available time, approved tools and spending limit. Stop and report when those limits prevent completion.
Reviewable
Keep the original request beside the result. Make missing evidence easy to find.
Keep the next decision honest.
Accept or return with a reason.
If the evidence meets the agreement, record what was accepted. If it falls short, identify the gap and the next action. A useful partial result can remain a partial result.
Change the brief openly.
Sometimes the work reveals that the original question was wrong. Revise it deliberately and preserve the earlier version. Moving the finish line silently makes the next review harder.
Try one sentence.
On the next assignment, write: “The human reviewer will accept this when they can inspect…” Finish the sentence before delegating. Then add the deadline and limits.
The question
Who will make the acceptance decision, and do they have what they need?
Ciao, Jason
Continue from Agree on the outcome. Then delegate. The acceptance note is a practical working suggestion, not a claim that an agent system has already proved dependable.