Exodus 18:13- 26 There is an adage that suggests we manage systems and lead peop

Question

Exodus 18:13- 26 There is an adage that suggests we manage systems and lead people. Management and leadership are distinct operations. Often, organizations confuse managing with leading and vise-versa. Exodus 18 provides a strategy to help leaders share responsibilities of managing systems so that proper leadership can take place. Discuss how you see shared leadership benefitting Moses’ leadership. What specific results took place when leadership was shared? Discuss an example you experienced where leadership was shared, the organizational system positively benefitted, and God was glorified through the process.

Explanation / Answer

Exodus 18:13- 26 There is an adage that suggests we manage systems and lead people. Management and leadership are distinct operations. Often, organizations confuse managing with leading and vise-versa. Exodus 18 provides a strategy to help leaders share responsibilities of managing systems so that proper leadership can take place. Discuss how you see shared leadership benefitting Moses’ leadership. What specific results took place when leadership was shared? Discuss an example you experienced where leadership was shared, the organizational system positively benefitted, and God was glorified through the process.

The main idea or the concept being referred in Exodus 18:13- 26 is the concept of sharing and delegation of responsibilities and tasks. Even when Moses is responsible for entire community and people, he got an advice from his father in law, to share his responsibilities and delegate tasks to these people who are honest and can work for the people and ensure justice and equality for all.

The idea here to identify right set of resources who can actually perform the task with dedication and passion without impacting the quality of expected output.

For instance in any organization entire set of tasks cannot be managed singlehandedly for one person, hence there is an organizational hierarchy where different roles are defined and various tasks are assigned to these roles so that the bigger piece of work can be divided into smaller works and can be effectively managed and controlled.

For example in any manufacturing shop floor, there are workers who would actually work on machines for e.g. a specific work center for lathe machine, then these workers of lathe machine work center would have a reporting manager for their work center or in other words a supervisor for lathe machine work center, similarly there would be other work centers for other type of machines and operations with respective supervisor.

All together for these supervisors there would be a department manager, then above the department manager there would be a shift manager, above these shift manager there would be another level of management leading to top bosses and board members.

Thus when you see from the prospective of management of leaves or any other queries of a worker from lathe machine work center then the supervisor of lathe machine work center is responsible for those activities and thus the line manager manages the staff and is responsible for the production output, thus relieving the department manager from these kind of activities and gives him / her additional bandwidth to focus on other tasks like innovation automation strategy preparation etc.

Sharing the responsibilities not only gives offloads your tasks but also gives you additional bandwidth to look into other tasks which could be of additional value to organization. At the same time the sharing of responsibilities ensures additional checks and balances in place thus ensuring the desired quality if maintained.

Things which cannot be solved by the chiefs / managers appointed by mosses were to be brought to him by his managers, thus Moses is not required to look into each and every minute details of everything and gives him additional bandwidth to spread the messages of God, make people aware of the laws and statues of GOD.

Thus by sharing the responsibilities it was possible to cater to more people in the same amount of time. At the same time it also gives the opportunity to grow and nurture new set of people to take-up new responsibilities and preparing a new line of managers.

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