Most organisations decide what to automate. Very few decide what they are not going to automate, which is the same decision taken from the other end and is the only one of the two that survives contact with a budget.
The answer, in one line
The list of decisions and capabilities an organisation keeps by hand rather than delegating to a machine, written down in advance. It is a list, it has names against it, and it exists on paper before anybody is asked to defend it.
In an interview on 23 September 2026 I put it like this: decide what you are not going to delegate. I call it custody.
Custody is a list. It says which decisions this organisation keeps by hand, which capabilities it intends to still have in three years, and who is accountable for each. It is written down. It exists before the tools arrive rather than after somebody asks an awkward question, and that timing is most of the value.
It is not data custody#
The obvious reading is the wrong one. Data custody is about where information lives, who may see it and what happens when it leaves, and most organisations of any size already have somebody accountable for it with a job title to match. That problem is understood, regulated and staffed.
This is the other thing. Judgement. Which calls stay with people, which people, and what the organisation must remain able to do without the systems it has bought. Nobody owns that and no regulation names it, and it changes what a company is without ever appearing on an agenda.
Why it has to be written before#
Afterwards, the question is not neutral any more. Once a system is deployed, the savings are in somebody's plan and the headcount has moved, deciding that a class of decision should have stayed human is no longer a choice. It is a reversal, and it arrives attached to a target somebody is being measured on. The right answer becomes the expensive one.
Written in advance it costs nothing. It is an hour in a room, it produces a page, and it settles an argument before there is one to have. The organisations that have done it are not more cautious than the ones that have not. They are earlier.
Where it already exists on this site under other names#
This is the word for something three existing pieces of work already produce, which is the argument for having the word at all.
The four-line board record. A board session ends with which decisions the machines may make, who can stop each one, how you would know if one went wrong, and what management reports next time. Read the first two lines back and they are a custody list written from the board's side. Board advisory.
Rules Before Tools. A day with an executive team, writing the rules in the room's own words before the next tool is bought. What comes out of that room is the custody list, and naming it gives the buyer something to ask for by name. The session.
The Drift Index. An annual reading that compares organisations with each other and with themselves two years earlier. What it will be comparing is how much of this each one kept. The Index.
What a custody list looks like#
Short, specific and uncomfortable. Not a values statement. Each line names a decision or a capability, a person or a role, and the reason.
- A decision that stays with a person, and who that person is. Not "pricing" but "any price change above a stated threshold, by the commercial director".
- A capability the organisation intends to still have unaided in three years, and how it will know it still has it. A capability nobody practises is not retained, it is remembered.
- A judgement that may be assisted but not made: the machine may draft it, propose it, rank it, and a named person decides it and answers for it.
- Something deliberately let go, written down as a decision rather than as a drift. A custody list that keeps everything is not a list, it is an anxiety.
The last one is the test of whether the exercise was honest. An organisation that comes out of it having decided to keep hold of everything has not decided anything.
What this does not tell you#
It does not tell you what belongs on your list. That depends on what your organisation is for, and a page cannot know it. It is not a framework, a maturity model or a scoring instrument, and there is no evidence here that organisations with a written list outperform the ones without: nobody has measured that, this research included, so the argument here is a structural one rather than an empirical one.
It is also a candidate word rather than a settled one. The idea has been on this site for two years under other names. Whether "custody" is the right name for it is a question the next year will answer, and if a better one appears this page will say so.
Explainer · SS-2026-299 · Graded against the published rubric
Hirji, R. (2026). What is custody?. The SuperSkills evidence base, SS-2026-299. https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-custody. Last reviewed 23 September 2026.
An evidence review by Rahim Hirji, not peer-reviewed research. For a material claim, cite the underlying study as well; every study here carries its own permanent link.
How citations and IDs work