Don’t Be the Solution.
There are times in leadership that we are tempted to be the solution to every problem.
Experiencing a leadership challenge? No problem. Give me some time to think about that and I’ll craft an answer.
Putting together the annual budget? Sure. I’ll get to that right after I’m back from vacation.
Coming up with a plan for an event? Absolutely. I will get a group together and we’ll make it happen.
It’s true that sometimes those solutions can be achieved easily enough and quickly enough, and everything works out okay in the end.
But if you are like me, you can see the drawbacks with all of the problems and “solutions” above: often times you make a statement like one of those mentioned (and I’ve said ’em all), and you become a bottleneck for actual progress.
Better to hand the solution off to the people around you. Better to trust your team. Better to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.
We see this in Acts chapter 6, where the apostles faced one of the earliest recorded church leadership challenges. The Greek-speaking widows weren’t being counted into the daily distribution of food, and it was causing some conflict.
The apostles could have huddled in the upper room to discuss it. They could have segmented a few of themselves to be a part of a task force. They could have taken up an hour of their weekly staff meeting every week for a month to discuss it.
They did none of those things.
What they did do was put the solution in someone else’s hands. They said in verses 3-4, “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.”
As Mac Lake said in his great book The Multiplication Effect, “The apostles decided to collaborate to find a solution rather than being the solution themselves.”
Where are you bottlenecking progress and trying to be the solution? Who else can you make the solution today?
