How Heavy is Your Load Now?
2024-01-18 Champions Weekly
I’ve been writing about time, and using the technique of journaling to help us know how to think and lead well. The next step is a fresh look at your workload. We cannot think and lead well when we’re loaded down.
I will assume that you’ve thought about this before. But the question I am asking you today is,
What is Your Load Right Now?
Your load, or the set of tasks which fall on you to complete or they won’t get done, changes all the time. I have heard from two leaders and Invite authors just in the past week how their load is heavy. They are being forced to re-evaluate how they use their time due to changing circumstances.
Long hours used to be a badge of honor. But now we know that it’s a path to burnout. If you’re working 50+ hours a week, you need to think this through. Even if you’re not, you probably are trying to do too much.
When I began Invite, we had no books and no staff. What do you do as a leader without a team or product? Early on, I made a discipline to make several phone calls every week. But I also had plenty of time to do things like data entry, website development, and graphic design, all to help set a vision for what I wanted. Now I do none of these things, and it would be ill-advised to try.
Here is a question I apply almost daily: What responsibilities can only I solve?
And conversely, what can I hand off to someone else’s care?
What Sun Tzu Says About Your Load
It has been said that strategy is largely about saying no. The first of 25 books I have committed to read for 2024 is The Art of War by Sun Tzu. While a common text in business for some time, I picked it up because I was curious what it said about strategy. Here is one of the book’s proverbs:
Sun Tzu said: The control of a large force is the same principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers.
And then:
Fighting with a large army under your command is in no way different from fighting with a small one: it is merely a question of instituting signs and signals.
Translation: As a leader, your primary jobs are always to 1) divide well and 2) communicate well.
Let’s look at the first of these: How do we divide well? If you find your schedule to be overly full, it’s time for a fresh look at how you’re dividing.
What Jethro Says About Your Load
Let’s learn through a story from Exodus 18.
The Egyptian army has drowned and the Hebrews are peacefully camped in the desert. Moses’ family arrives. After a joyful reunion full of fun stories of leaving town, a good evening meal, it is now the next morning, and Moses has returned to work. Scripture describes it as Moses returning to the seat he normally takes, where he listens to the people and makes judgments to give advice, settle disputes, and basically make law as a one-person judicial system.
The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning till evening.
As we’ve learned, though, the size of the horde he manages is ridiculously large: 600,000 men plus families (Ex 12:37, Numbers 1:46). Likely over 2 million people. It is unimaginable to think of Moses managing this by himself. It connotes that there was really no system of governance in the camp. As with any society, there would have been good apples and bad apples, which means to some degree the camp was functioning as a free for all. His father-in-law Jethro sees what is happening and immediately identifies the problem.
When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, “What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?”
Stop here. How many people are coming to you right now, today? Do you have adequate time to think, as I previously discussed? Or are you full from morning till evening?
Moses answered him, “Because the people come to me to seek God’s will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God’s decrees and instructions.”
Ah, so Moses is reacting. People are coming to him and he’s setting his calendar accordingly. With this information comes the key guiding filter Jethro names for Moses:
The work is too heavy for you.
Has your work become too heavy for you? Are you reacting? If so, how can you make a Jethro-style adjustment to your workload?
First, understand the reason(s) for the heavy load.
Is it due to growth? Changing responsibilities? Outside issues such as family concerns? Will it be a short season, or is this simply the new reality?
Second, divide until your load becomes healthy.
Choose carefully how you will spend your time. Push responsibility down to the people under your care. In every task that comes your way, constantly ask yourself, is this best for me to do, or should I hand it off to someone else?
Only Moses can communicate God’s instructions. Jethro applies his administrative skills and suggests a more proactive strategy by dividing:
Moses’ father-in-law replied, “What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. Listen now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. You must be the people’s representative before God and bring their disputes to him. Teach them his decrees and instructions, and show them the way they are to live and how they are to behave.
Jethro and Sun Tau clearly went to the same school. Divide well and then spend your time communicating. Jethro then recommends a tiered system of governance.
But select capable men from all the people—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you.
The way I do this is to constantly look for someone else to handle specific tasks, while paying attention to their loads as well. When you are full, and the people under your care become full, then bring in more people.
Jethro describes this as creating a system of leaders who manage “thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens.” Think of this as levels of responsibility, from more to less.
I use a five level system to bring in new people, starting from less and moving to more: first volunteers, then freelancers, then contractors, then part time, then full time staff. I like for people to earn their leadership, and give out responsibilities according to their giftedness. If they succeed, I give them more. If they struggle for a season, I coach them up.
Then, I work with the people directly in my care—those with the most responsibilities—making sure their load isn’t getting too heavy, offering suggestions on how to lighten it, and helping them to manage themselves.
I consider this one of my most critical leadership tasks, for both myself and the people in my care.
How heavy is your load now?
Championing Invite
The fourth anniversary of Invite Resources is coming in March. We are no longer a fresh start up. I am trying to divide my load accordingly. While our capable team is handling much of the production now, one of the things I have named for myself is to continue to give a close look at the title for every book we publish. Titles are critical to a book’s success, and more manuscripts need titles that make sense to core audiences and fit well in the marketplace. A title analysis, which is both researched and creative, is a task I do well and will continue to offer moving forward.