When was the last time someone you trust told you, to your face, that the way you work is not sustainable? If you can’t remember, you may be standing where Moses once stood. In Exodus 18, Moses sits as judge for the people, and they stand around him “from morning till evening” (Exodus 18:13, ESV). His father-in-law, Jethro, watches this for a day and then says something I wish more advisors had the nerve to say: “What you are doing is not good” (Exodus 18:17, ESV). He gives the reason in the same breath: “You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone” (Exodus 18:18, ESV).
Notice who else gets worn out: “the people with you.” That detail should get an owner’s attention. When the owner is the only door every decision has to walk through, the line forms outside that door, and everyone in line is waiting on work they can’t finish. The owner feels like the hardest worker in the building. Often the owner is also the slowest part of the system.
You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone.
— Exodus 18:18, ESV
One of the hardest conversations I have with clients is telling them they are the ones getting in the way of the company getting results. They need to empower their team to go forward and not micromanage, let people fail forward, and give them enough rope to learn from each experience. I usually start with a question: can you see the business being more productive without you being in the way? The owners who answer honestly are halfway home.
I have a name for one type of owner I meet: Mr. Overwhelm. He writes his list of goals while driving to the office. By the time he walks in, someone is waiting with a sick call, a missed deadline, and four messages from unhappy clients, and the list from the car doesn’t get touched until early afternoon. At five he is watching everyone leave and looking for a reason to call home and say he’ll be late for dinner. That is how I define overwhelm, and it has very little to do with how hard he works.
The research points the same direction. A study in the Journal of Business Venturing (opens in new tab) compared people who became self-employed with their identical twins who stayed employed. The self-employed twins reported about 24% higher perceived stress over six years, and the researchers estimate roughly two-thirds of that stress comes from running the business itself, not from genetics or upbringing. Longer working hours were linked to a notable rise in stress. That is Jethro’s warning with a data set behind it. Carrying the whole load is hard on anyone, and the cause sits in how the job is built.
higher perceived stress over six years for people who became self-employed, compared with their identical twins who stayed employed. Souitaris et al., Journal of Business Venturing (Bayes Business School) →
Jethro’s fix is as specific as his diagnosis. He skips the pep talk about working harder or praying more. He tells Moses to “look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe,” and to place them over groups of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. Then comes the rule I would hand to every owner: “Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves” (Exodus 18:21-22, ESV). Character first, then clear lines about what belongs to whom, then a defined path for the decisions that really are the owner’s.
That is close to how I work with owners. A written vision, mission, and company commitments, job descriptions with standards of performance, monthly meetings, and quarterly reviews are all communication tools, and 99% of my business clients don’t understand or use them at any level. They are the thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens of a modern company. Without them, small decisions keep flowing to the owner because nobody knows where the line sits.
Jesus modeled this too. In Luke 10:1, “the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him” (ESV) into the towns he planned to visit. He could have walked every road himself. He chose to prepare other people, send them, and trust them with real work before he arrived. In Scripture, delegation keeps authority intact and lets the work grow bigger than one person.
None of this is a formula. Faith doesn’t promise that handing off decisions will raise your revenue or lighten every week, and Jethro doesn’t promise it either. He says it will be easier for the leader, and that the people “will bear the burden with you” (Exodus 18:22, ESV). That is a modest promise, and a true one. If you are the bottleneck in your own company, start by listing the decisions that crossed your desk this week and sorting them into great matters and small matters. Then read Playing It Safe Is the Riskiest Thing You Can Do for the fear that usually sits behind holding on.
This work sits at the center of GH Group’s Inside-Out Method™, because a business that waits on one person to decide will never run the way its owner hopes.
