The Dunbar Principle
Every leader eventually discovers this painful truth: The very leadership style that helped create success often becomes the thing that limits future growth.
Early in my executive coaching career, I spent a significant amount of time working with Senior Pastors and their leadership teams to develop healthy cultures and organizational structures that could eventually become fertile ground for ministry growth.
One of the most fascinating discoveries during that season was something called The Dunbar Principle – more commonly known today as Dunbar's Number.
In the 1990s, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed that there is a limit to the number of stable interpersonal relationships the average human being can maintain.
That number appears to range somewhere between 100 and 250 people, with the prevailing average settling around 150.
"Dunbar has argued that 150 would be the mean group size only for communities with a very high incentive to remain together. For a group of this size to remain cohesive, Dunbar speculated that as much as 42% of the group's time would have to be devoted to social grooming. Correspondingly, only groups under intense survival pressure, such as subsistence villages, nomadic tribes, and historical military groupings, have, on average, achieved the 150-member mark." (Wikipedia)
In other words, there are natural limits built into the way we are designed.
This isn’t a flaw. It’s reality.
And while Dunbar would not publish his research for another three thousand years, Scripture appears to acknowledge the same principle long before modern anthropology gave it a name.
Consider Moses. By Exodus 18, Moses has become the undisputed leader of Israel. Millions have been delivered from Egypt, but now a different problem has emerged.
Everyone needs Moses.
Every dispute, conflict, decision, and problem is flowing across his proverbial desk. The people stand in line from morning until evening waiting for their opportunity to access their leader.
Moses' father-in-law (Jethro) watches the scene unfold and offers one of the most practical pieces of leadership advice in Scripture:
"What you are doing is not good." (Exodus 18:17)
Notice what he doesn’t say. He does not question Moses' character or his calling, his competence or his capability. The issue is scalability. Jethro continues:
"You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out." (Exodus 18:18)
This story should be required study for every founder, executive, and organizational leader.
Most organizations don’t stop growing because they run out of opportunity. They stop growing because they run into the limits of human capacity.
Jethro's solution was simple but revolutionary. Delegate. Appoint capable leaders over groups of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens.
Distribute responsibility. Develop other leaders. Create structure. Build systems. In short, move from a single-cell model to a multi-cell model. The mission was never supposed to depend on one person.
Jesus followed a remarkably similar pattern. Although thousands followed him, he did not attempt to maintain intimate relationships with everyone. There were layers.
The crowds. The seventy-two. The twelve. And then the three – Peter, James, and John – who experienced a level of access and development different from everyone else.
Jesus understood something many leaders struggle to accept. The fact that influence and intimacy are not the same thing.
As impact expands, leadership must become increasingly distributed. The mission grows through multiplication, not centralization.
This is where founders get stuck.
If you have ever found yourself thinking, Why does everything still have to come through me? you have already encountered the wall – because the very behaviors that helped launch the organization have become obstacles threatening to block its next season of growth.
The founder who personally handled every customer relationship. The pastor who personally shepherded every member. The entrepreneur who personally approved every decision. The executive who personally solved every problem.
Those approaches often work brilliantly…until they don’t.
Eventually growth creates friction. Not because the organization is unhealthy, but because the leadership model is no longer appropriate for the size of the mission.
Many leaders interpret this friction incorrectly. They assume they need to work harder. Be more available. Attend more meetings. Answer more questions. Stay involved in more decisions.
The solution is rarely more heroic effort. The solution is usually better leadership architecture.
Leadership maturity is the transition from being the source of all influence to becoming the builder of influence through others.
That shift can feel uncomfortable, especially for founders, highly relational leaders, and people whose identity has become intertwined with being needed.
But if your goal is to increase the impact of your gifts, your message, your business, your ministry, or your mission, the transition must eventually occur.
Otherwise you and the people you lead will spend years banging your heads against a wall that was never meant to move.
The lesson of Dunbar's research, Jethro's counsel, and Jesus' ministry model is remarkably consistent.
We were not designed to lead alone.
Great leaders stop measuring their impact by how many people they personally lead and start measuring their impact by how many leaders they develop.
God's work has always advanced through multiplication. One leader becomes many. One team becomes many teams. One cell becomes many cells.
The question is not whether your organization can grow. The question is whether you are willing to grow beyond the leadership model that got you here.
Blessings to you, my friends!
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This Week’s Resource Recommendation:
"The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations"
- Ori Brafman & Rod A. Beckstrom
From Amazon: If you cut off a spider's head, it dies; if you cut off a starfish's leg it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Traditional top-down organizations are like spiders, but now starfish organizations are changing the face of business and the world.
What's the hidden power behind the success of Wikipedia, craigslist, and Skype? What do eBay and General Electric have in common with the abolitionist and women's rights movements? What fundamental choice put General Motors and Toyota on vastly different paths?
Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom have discovered some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections. The Starfish and the Spider explores what happens when starfish take on spiders and reveals how established companies and institutions, from IBM to Intuit to the U.S. government, are also learning how to incorporate starfish principles to achieve success.
MMS 26-23
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