“When Moses’ father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he asked, “What are you really accomplishing here? Why are you trying to do all this alone while everyone stands around you from morning till evening?”

When there is lots to be done and all the decisions, work, and flow get stuck with one person, we call these people, “Bottlenecks”.  If the neck of a bottle narrows then the flow goes slower and the same thing happens with workflow.  There are certain people who just need to either delegate or get out of the way, otherwise they become the bottleneck that hold everyone else back.  We know who these people are and if we are one of them, people know that as well.  Organizations run better without bottlenecks but it takes courage and commitment to identify and remove the bottlenecks that slow everyone else down.  A huge improvement would be just to make the removal of bottlenecks a priority.

It took Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, to get Moses to stop being a bottleneck.  Moses was trying to to do it all and He was holding up his people and it wasn’t until Jethro called him out on it that Moses changed his ways.  We each can be bottlenecks and never realize that we are being so.  What we might need is our Jethro, who will call us out and tell us the truth.  Our Jethro can do more than that as well.  She/he can hold us accountable to living the life that God calls us to live.  So, it’s a good challenge to determine if we are a bottleneck or not, but even a better challenge is to find our own Jethro.

Reference: Exodus 18:14 (New Living Translation)