Organizations hand their best people an outcome to own - a turnaround, a deadline, a budget, a transformation - and assume that because they are a trusted enough to be given it, they must also have been empowered to deliver it.
Those are different gifts. Most organizations hand out one while believing they’ve handed out both.
Trusted is not the same as equipped.
30 years
U.S. Army & Army Reserve, retired Colonel
3 Combat Deployments
Uzbekistan, Qatar, Afghanistan
$200M
Largest contract managed
PMP
Certified since 2012
The most dangerous place I ever worked was not the war zone.
In 2007 I was the country lead in Afghanistan for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Convoys, IEDs, a road my teams had to take that everyone knew was targeted. It was genuinely dangerous. It was also one of the sanest environments I have ever worked in — because every person in that convoy had the authority to act on the responsibility they'd been handed.
Four years later I was in an office in Orlando, Florida, running a contract I had been recruited, relocated and paid handsomely to rescue. Everyone in that company believed they had set me up to succeed. They had given me the trust, the title, the raise and the relocation. They had not given me a single decision I was allowed to make.
I had a heart attack at forty-nine years old, with no risk factors and no family history.
“What costs you isn’t the difficulty of the mission. It’s the gap between what you’re expected to deliver and what you’ve actually been empowered to change.”
Four questions. Ninety seconds. One number that tells you whether the job you just assigned is possible.
The Authority Audit is a diagnostic I built out of the situation that nearly killed me — and have since run on projects, portfolios and people across defense, government and healthcare.
You score four levers, zero to two. Eight points possible.
Decision Rights — Can they change scope, price or schedule without escalating every time?
Resource Control — Do they control the budget, the vendors and the people?
Documentation — Is there a paper trail that protects them in a dispute?
Escalation Power — When they hit a wall, is there a real and fast path to get unstuck?
My Orlando score was a two out of eight. It was never going to work. Any one of us could have run that calculation in a minute and a half. Nobody did, because nobody knew to look.
The dangerous score isn't zero. It's four.
A zero is obvious. Everyone can see it and someone usually says something.
A four is partial authority on every lever. Enough power to make progress. Not enough to finish. Enough early success that every— including the person in the seat — believes it's working.
Fours don't fail loudly. They fail slowly, then all at once. And when they do, the story everyone tells is that the person wasn't up to it.
Two keynotes. One idea. Authority fails in two directions. Sheryl speaks on both.
The Authority Audit
What almost killed me in the safest place I ever worked
When responsibility outruns authority, capable people break — and organizations misdiagnose it as a performance problem. A diagnostic tool, a story audiences don't forget, and a number every leader in the room leaves holding.
You Don't Have to Be the Smartest Person in the Room
Leading experts when you aren't one
When authority outruns expertise, capable people fake fluency and burn credibility they need. How to build structural authority — the kind that scales across domains you will never master.
Thirty years. Five industries. The same failure every time.
Sheryl has run the structural side of the work in about as many environments as one career allows.
U.S. Army — Master planner for base construction in Uzbekistan, 2001. Chief of engineer operations at a joint headquarters, Qatar. Country lead in Afghanistan supporting a 37-nation coalition.
Disaster response — Temporary housing and mass care for three FEMA regions, including construction of housing in American Samoa after the 2009 tsunami.
Defense contracting — A $200 million Marine Corps contract across six bases and thirty-two delivery orders. Navy training simulator programs supporting nine ports worldwide.
Corporate — The three largest internal projects at a Fortune Global 500 insurer. National-level HCM implementations.
Healthcare — Founded and leads the first ambulatory project management office at a major academic medical center, recognized as the premier PMO in the health system.
Score someone on your team before you leave this page.
The Authority Audit one-page scorecard. Four levers, the scoring bands, and the three questions to ask before you hand anyone an outcome to own.
Free. One page. No course, no funnel.