Moses stands at the edge of the promised land with a generation that grew up on rules. Their parents had the same rules and wandered for forty years.
So in Deuteronomy he does not add more rules. He says these words “shall be on your heart.” Talk about them at home, on the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. He is after something a rulebook cannot produce.
The idea. Allowing autonomy is the third step of the LEADS Path. A rule gets you behavior while you are watching. Commitment gets you good decisions when you are not. If your team needs a rule for every case, they will need you for every case the rules missed. Give people the purpose, and they can handle what nobody predicted.
The action for this week. Pick one rule your team follows that few could explain. Rewrite the rule as a purpose: “We do this so that…” Share the sentence with the team and ask whether the rule still serves the purpose.
“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.”Deuteronomy 6:6, ESV
Jake
P.S. Teams rewrite a rule as a purpose in the fifth session of the One-Day Workshop.