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Stop Micromanaging: Jethro's Advice to Moses on Delegating Leadership

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This is a guest post by Loren Pinilis, who blogs on time management from a biblical perspective at Life of a Steward. 

In Exodus 18, Moses’s father-in-law, Jethro, offers sound advice that all leaders should take to heart.

From morning to evening, Moses would judge the disputes of the people. And from morning to evening, they would stand around waiting to have their cases heard. Jethro counseled Moses: “What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you.”

Moses was essentially micro-managing things by allowing all decisions to be funneled through him.

Note that Moses had good intentions. He wanted the people to know and understand the law, and he took his influence and responsibility over the nation seriously. He judged each case personally because each case mattered to him and to God.

It’s the same for leaders today, particularly in ministry roles. We have a reverence for even the smallest areas under our influence, and we have a healthy respect for our duties as leaders.

But there are very serious consequences when we let our concept of a sacred duty turn into micro-management.

Jethro could see that this pattern of behavior would cause utter exhaustion for Moses, and that’s what most people focus on when they mention this passage. But Jethro also realized that Moses’s leadership style would have a negative effect on the people. The court would get backlogged, the nation would be frustrated, and eventually many would abandon the idea of receiving justice.

When a leader insists on making or approving every decision, an organizational bottleneck is created. The limiting factor for that organization’s effectiveness becomes the time and attention of the leader.

An interesting thing then often happens. The leaders recognize that they can only do so much. But rather than delegate some of their decision making (often out of a well-intentioned respect for their responsibility), they engineer the system to accommodate for their limited time.

Teams prepare proposals and reports to pre-digest the information for those who have the ability to pull the trigger. It seems sensible: you’re minimizing the time the leaders spend on approving decisions and therefore maximizing what your organization can do.

But this is designing the entire organizational structure around the limitations of the leader. It’s the exact opposite of how leadership should work.

Imagine how many hours the team spends preparing reports to save the leader a few minutes. Imagine what else could have been done with that time and energy. This is the price of micro-management.

Jethro’s advice wasn’t to streamline the court. It wasn’t to appoint people who would summarize the information for Moses so he could render quick verdicts.

Instead, Jethro’s wise counsel was to delegate: to train up leaders who could take a portion of Moses’s authority and participate with him in caring for the nation. Moses could lead instead of holding everyone back.

He could handle his workload. The people wouldn’t be frustrated. Leaders would be trained for greater things. And Justice would be administered.

Church Productivity: Organizational Effectiveness and Not Personal Effectiveness

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This is a guest post by Loren Pinilis. Loren blogs on time stewardship at Life of a Steward.

For a long time, my desire has been to not waste my life. I wanted to do great things for God and to bring him as much glory as possible.

But I was going about it all wrong.

My thinking was refined by Dave Harvey’s Rescuing Ambition and by what Matt has said here on What’s Best Next.

I had an individualistic view of good works. Productivity was all about what I personally could contribute and accomplish. I looked for ways to use my strengths and to follow the callings and burdens that God had given me.

But I’ve realized the New Testament model for effectiveness is strikingly different. Instead, we see God working through his church. We see the passion of the apostles to build up this corporate body. We see God creating, refining, and growing local congregations of believers — and expressing his love to the nations through them.

This should radically change our view of productivity. We shift from a model that focuses on personal effectiveness to one that centers on organizational effectiveness. The most important thing is the team record, not the stats of the players.

This organizational productivity is not about finding fulfillment in our ministry. It’s not about making sure our gifts are utilized to the fullest. It’s about what’s best for the church.

There is a relationship between personal effectiveness and organizational effectiveness. God did, after all, give us strengths and gifts that he intends for us to steward well. But when spiritual gifts are discussed in the Bible, it’s in the context of the church. These gifts are given so that we join with others who have complementary strengths – and together we build up the church, serve the needs of others, and fulfill the Great Commission.

The danger, however, is when the church becomes merely a vehicle for us to pursue our personal ministry goals. In the desire to maximize our own individual productivity, we end up devaluing the local church. Instead of the church being a functioning body, it becomes some Frankenstein’s monster of individual parts sewn together.

I like the way Dave Harvey puts it: “The church shouldn’t merely accommodate our ministry; it should help define it according to the present needs of the church. This means if you have a burden for adult education but the church needs someone to teach kids, then grab the milk and cookies and get your lessons ready.”

“Having a heart” for a particular area of ministry is a signpost pointing you to an area where you may be the most productive. Passions are often God’s way of showing you how you can contribute to the greatest organizational effectiveness of the church.

But the performance of the body is the final measure of success — not our fulfillment. Not our individual accomplishments.

If the pursuit of our lives is to bring God glory, let’s make sure we’re doing it in a way that honors him and his body. Let’s do what will help the church the most — asking first “what needs to be done,” rather than simply “what would I like to do.”