Why Are You Doing
This Alone?

Jethro watched Moses work for a single day and called it not good — and the reason had as much to do with the people standing in line as with Moses.

I spent a decade in an industry where a single undocumented step could hurt somebody.

Pharmaceutical manufacturing is regulated to an extent most people would find excessive, and every bit of it is warranted. Every dose coming off that line has to be identical to the one before it, because the person taking it is depending on that being true.

The company I worked for ran a seasonal model. The product was used mostly in fall and winter, which meant it had to be produced in spring and summer, which meant they didn’t need a full staff twelve months a year. They brought in temporary workers to meet the surge.

Think about what that requires.

It means the quality of the product could not depend on who was standing at that station. It had to be documented so thoroughly that a person hired eight weeks ago could execute it exactly the way someone with fifteen years could — because the system carried the knowledge, not the people.

I watched that work, every season, for years.

And then I went and built Elements of Aliel in a way where absolutely everything ran through me.

The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning till evening. 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?”

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.”

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. 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. If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied.”

Exodus 18:13–23 · New International Version

A fresh pair of eyes

Jethro is visiting. He watches his son-in-law work for one day.

One day is all it takes. He sees Moses sitting from morning until evening while the people stand around him waiting, and he asks the question that starts everything: why do you alone sit as judge?

Moses has an answer, and it’s a good one. The people come to me to seek God’s will. I settle their disputes and I inform them of His decrees.

It is true. It is important work. It is also, Jethro tells him plainly, not good.

Here’s what’s important. Moses had been doing this for who knows how long and hadn’t seen it. Jethro saw it in an afternoon. That’s not because Jethro was wiser than Moses — this is the man who spoke with God face to face — it’s because Jethro was on the outside looking in.

You cannot see the shape of something you are standing inside. You will defend a process you built because you remember why you built it. You will absorb an inefficiency for years because you’ve stopped experiencing it as one. The person who has been doing the work is almost never the person who can see the work.

So bring someone in. A consultant, a mentor, a peer who runs something similar, an advisor who will tell you the truth. And don’t wait until it’s on fire. Jethro didn’t arrive during a crisis. He arrived on an ordinary afternoon and found one anyway.

One thing about the counsel you accept, though, and it’s the whole reason this passage is safe to build on.

Jethro opens his advice with may God be with you and closes it with if God so commands. He brackets his own counsel with God on both ends. He knows Moses answers to Someone above him, and he subordinates his best thinking to that. He doesn’t say do it my way. He says take this to God and see.

That’s the standard for anyone you let speak into your business. Not just competence. Someone who understands what you’re accountable to, and who would rather be overruled by God than followed by you.

The people were the ones standing

Now here’s the part I think most of us read straight past.

Jethro says: you and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out.

Not just Moses. Them too.

I had always read this as a burnout passage. Take care of yourself, Moses, you’re doing too much. And it is that. But it is at least as much about the people standing in that line from morning until evening waiting for a decision they needed.

Think about what that bottleneck actually cost them. Some waited all day and never got to the front. Some carried a problem for weeks that could have been settled in ten minutes. And some of them — this is the part that convicts me — eventually got their answer long after it could do them any good. The dispute had already hardened. The opportunity had already passed. The need went unmet, not because Moses didn’t care, but because there was only one of him and a whole nation of them.

That is a stewardship failure, disguised as devotion.

Moses wasn’t hoarding. He was serving with everything he had. But stewarding people doesn’t only mean caring about them. It means building something that can actually meet the need while the need is still live.

So when we say systems, understand what’s at stake. It isn’t your convenience. It’s whether the person who needed you in March gets you in March, or gets you in July, or never gets you at all because they gave up waiting and went somewhere else.

And look at what Jethro promises in verse 23 if Moses builds it: you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied.

Both. Not one at the expense of the other. A good system isn’t a trade where you get rest and your people get less of you. Done right, it’s the only arrangement where both of you get what you need.

Capable, and God-fearing, and trustworthy

Then Jethro tells Moses who to put in place, and the criteria are worth reading slowly.

One of the four is about ability. Three of them are about character.

We hire the opposite way, usually. We look at the portfolio, the résumé, the speed, the price. Can she do the work? And capability matters — Jethro lists it first — but he does not stop there, because Moses isn’t filling a task. He’s handing someone authority over people he’s responsible for.

Anyone you bring into your business inherits some portion of your relationship with the people you serve. They will answer emails that carry your name. They will make judgment calls when you aren’t in the room, using their values because yours weren’t available. Skill tells you what they can execute. Character tells you what they’ll do the moment nobody is checking.

Hire for the second one. You can teach the first.

How you do it, not only what you do

There’s a phrase in Jethro’s advice that I keep returning to: if God so commands.

Even the fix had to be brought back to God. The delegation structure, the tiers of thousands and hundreds and fifties and tens, the whole operational design — Jethro doesn’t treat it as neutral machinery beneath God’s interest. He treats it as something God should have a say in.

I think we’ve decided that the spiritual part of our work is the mission and the operational part is just logistics. The vision gets prayed over. The workflow does not.

But the way you build is a moral document. Your system decides who gets access and who waits. It decides whether your team is treated like people or like capacity. It decides whether a client is met with care or processed. How you do it is as much a matter of obedience as what you do.

So here’s the test, and it’s uncomfortable.

If the honest answer is that they’d simply wait, that’s Exodus 18 — and you’re Moses on day one, and the work is good and the structure underneath it isn’t.

The one thing to do this week

Find your bottleneck. There’s one thing in your business that cannot move forward without you personally touching it, and you already know what it is — you thought of it while reading the last section.

Write down what it costs. Not what it costs you. What it costs the person waiting on the other side of it.

How long do they wait? What do they do while they’re waiting? How many of them stop waiting?

That’s the whole assignment. You don’t have to fix it this week. You have to stop calling it dedication.

One last thing, and then I’ll let you go.

Verse 24 is one sentence long.