Are You Doing Too Much?

If you’re the leader of an organization or a ministry or a department. The answer is “yes!” You most definitely can outsource duties that are important, but not necessarily the most important thing that you do. Here’s a management lesson from the Bible:

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”
Acts 6:1‭-‬4 ESV

There are two things to note about this situation from a management perspective:

1. Demand was beginning to overwhelm the supply – “Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number…”
2. People critical to the mission were being neglected and overlooked – “…their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution….”

Is this a situation you are familiar with at your church or organization? You have way too much to do because you’re responsible for a lot and sometimes, you or the team you are responsible for drops the ball and people are adversely impacted? If that is you, you are not alone. The apostles faced exactly the same thing and hundreds of thousands of leaders today face the same issues.

Simple — do exactly what the apostles did.

So what did the apostles do about the issue?

The apostles took four bold actions that we need to learn from and implement into our own leadership.

1. They gathered all the church’s stakeholders together to communicate the issue

I don’t know how much time elapsed from the time people were being neglected to when the complaint was received by the apostles. But, what I do know is that the apostles moved to action. Their first action, probably after praying about it, was to gather the church together to tell people that there is an issue and that they are unable to effectively carry out their mission if this important, but not necessarily their primary mission becomes a task that eats away at their time to carry out their mission.

Most leaders tend not to communicate issues with stakeholders, but the lesson here is that we should. They should know what your priorities are and what the actual issues are. The apostles weren’t shy about telling people exactly what the problem was and where the disconnect is. The conversation was clear and concise and there was no feelings and emotions involved that would lead to fractures.

2. They had people other than themselves identify the best candidates

I love this action because as the leader who is doing too much, we’re often unaware of who the best candidates are around us. That’s because we’re the ones responsible and nobody does it as well as us. The apostles changed that paradigm and asked the stakeholders to point out the 7 best candidates to fulfill this important duty.

It takes a lot of humility to ask for help and as a leader, especially a leader that is a faithful disciple of Jesus, we need to humbly accept that we may not be the expert on talent and that other people will have a perspective better than our own.

3. They gave away the duties and responsibilities to the selected candidates

The apostles 100% gave away the duties and responsibilities to the candidates selected by other stakeholders. That is incredible trust. The reason you dropped the ball and missed a few targets and even have way too much on your plate is because you don’t trust well. Very rarely is it about resources. If it is about resources, then this is not for you, but looking at the situation where demand is overwhelming supply, you should have already started to scale your operation. That’s an aside, but, we need to start changing how we give away trust.

When we give away the duties and responsibilities, the burdens that come with it are lifted. Moreover, we learn to have more trust. Try it.

4. They reaffirmed their primary and most important duties and focus on those

This is the most important step: Do not add a new thing to your list of responsibilities just because you offloaded one. That is our natural tendency to fill the time or responsibility gap, but that’s the wrong mentality. We need to use that space and time to focus on our primary objective and our most important duty. For the apostles it was to rededicate their time to praying and teaching.

If you don’t know where or how to begin this, then start with prayer and then contact me and ask me about personnel outsourcing.