Leadership Quote by George Washington

Washington is doing something rarer than complaining about bureaucracy: he’s arguing for a theory of responsibility built on human nature. The line’s severity - “scarcely done at all” - isn’t rhetorical flourish so much as a warning from a commander who had watched committees turn urgency into drift. In the Revolutionary War and the shaky early republic, delays weren’t inconveniences; they were strategic liabilities. A missed shipment, an undecided policy, a muddled chain of command could cost lives, legitimacy, or the whole project.

The specific intent is managerial and political at once. Washington is pushing back against the era’s reflexive distrust of concentrated power. Americans, fresh from monarchy, leaned toward boards and shared authority as a safeguard. Washington concedes the fear but insists on the trade-off: dispersing duty disperses ownership. When everyone is in charge, no one is. His phrasing “found adequate” flatters the ideal of merit, then uses it to justify clear delegation: if you’ve identified competence, multiply it by giving it room to act, not by surrounding it with equals.

The subtext is accountability as a moral technology. One person can be praised or blamed; two can triangulate; three can hide. Washington is diagnosing what we’d now call diffusion of responsibility, but he frames it as practical experience, not abstract psychology. It’s also a quiet defense of executive energy - the argument that effectiveness requires a singular hand on the lever, even in a republic allergic to crowns.