“These men were always available to solve the people’s common disputes. They brought the major cases to Moses, but they took care of the smaller matters themselves.”

Here is a little five-part series I’ve titled, “The Business” to dive down into a few areas of business leadership that we sometimes overlook.

How do bottlenecks occur?  Why is that work flows, but then gets held up for approval? Why do we have to wait on decisions?  These are questions that are asked often, but rarely out loud and in forums where something could be done about them. Why?  Well, usually because the person who needs to be spoken to about the problems is the person who is the one creating them.  It’s typically, the boss.  The one person who can’t delegate and feels like he/she has to do it all themselves.  There are many reasons why people become this way; fear of failure, insecurity in their own position, lack of trust in others, ego, power, etc.  Whatever the reason, we need to be on the lookout for bottleneckers and logjammers and either get them to change their ways or remove them.  Seldom do we address this issue publicly, but we should, because everyone knows that the problem exists but are afraid to address the elephant in the room.

Moses had a delegation problem.  His Father-in-law told him so.  It’s not surprising to me that Moses fell into the trap, as every time the Israelites had a problem they came to him and then he went to God and God used Moses to fix the problem.  So, a pattern was set and Moses kept following it.  Until, it came to earthly things and he had to change his ways. We read in Exodus that his delegation experiment ended fine and the newly appointed Judges were able to handle all of the smaller matters by themselves, of course freeing up Moses to focus on the larger and more complex matters.  What the Bible doesn’t go on to tell us, but we know because we all work, that those lower appointed Judges had been given fulfilling and rewarding work to do. Why?  Because, “They judged the smaller matters themselves”.  Themselves, being the key word.  Today, there is someone you work with who desires to do more and they have all the potential and talent to do more well.  But, we, or someone else, are holding them back because we just won’t give up what we think no one can do as well as us.  Think about that today and when you see this happening, ask yourselves, “Now, what did the enlightened Moses do?” and then go do something about it.

Reference: Exodus 18:26 (New Living Translation)