Dutch Driver wrote:
>If a scientist sets out to get alcohol from corn or potatoes the end
>product is likely to be different. One will give you moonshine the other
>vodka. A different intial premise will get a different conclusion. If
>you start with leadership and place management under it the result would
>have been different. Unfortunately, I cannot prove a negative, but if I
>were present a hundred years ago, I would have done my darnedest to
>discredit a theory that placed management over leadership.
I have to disagree, and agree with K.Kemper.
What good is leadership without a functional context? What does
leadership do without a goal?
Is the Chief Engineer "managing" or "leading" his design team? Yes
the CE organizes the team, thus a management function. Yes the CE plans
the work to be performed and allocates responsibilities, another set of
management functions. But in the technical arena (what compensation is
based on), leadership skills, and technical skills get the job done. How
does the CE determine what to design? Vodka or motor fuel? Is it
leaderhip that determines the nature of the CE's group goals or is it
management performing the overall planning function, i.e. providing the
cost, quality, quantity, performance criteria to achieve the end result?
The leadership skills discussed so far are the old out dated leadership
models, the "follow me boys" model. What about the leader who guides the
group, letting them set the goals and facititaing them to achieve those
goals. Every study I have read, showed that the group achieved greater
accomplishments than any of the members (including the leader) ever thought
possible. Conclusion, if a group just follows a leader, when the leader
stops the group does to. I seem to recall a famous POGO cartoon, - "Wait
for me, for I am your leader!!!"
I am running into more and more managers and engineers following the newer
model in actual practice. For those of you who feel that the old school
managers are untrainable, maybe they are; but one of the byproducts of
"downsizing/rightsizing" etc., is a change is leadership styles in a lot of
aerospace groups.
As a _manager_ in industry and Government, leading was a big chunk of my
time, but not the majority of it. As a Program Manager, (of a
multi-million dollar program) leadership was a very small part. Managing
the execution of the contract was a big part of my effort. Keeping my $$$
secure and coming was the biggest problem. Was I "leading" the layers of
Command and Congressional staffers? I don't think so. Was I "leading" the
other Program Managers who attacked to try to get my funds for their
programs? I don't think so.
Ken Hawks
Rome Laboratory
Hypothesis: The difference between an art and a science: in a science the
deffinitions are universally accepted.