Sat, 17 Apr 1999 Carter McNamara wrote RE: "leading" vs "managing"
>
>Yesterday, a consultant told me that he doesn't work with middle or
>lower levels of management. He only works with "leadership".
Why the presumption of either-or? In my experience successful companies
allow everyone to be a leader and a manager, simultaneously. The only
difference between lower levels and higher levels is the subject matter
with which they must deal. (In the really successful very little time is
spent discussing such fine points).
It is true that executives have to invent reasons for their ludicrous
compensation. One invention is to foster the notion that they are
"leaders" --- mysteriously different than "managers." They even attend
special leadership retreats to earn new Decoder Rings and secret chants
about Seven (+ or - 2) Principles. And it is true that the "Witchdoctors"
need to make executives feel that executives are special ("wrestling with
superhuman problems and scary risks) so that the executive has a reason for
engaging a consultant. But the deeper culprit seems to be the
executive-focused media who need a new "meme" every year in order to keep
the conversation going. And at the core you will find the professors of
the leading business schools who are compelled, about every seven years, to
discover new cause-effect relationships about running a business and new
"solutions" for running a business. One only has to review 30 to 40 years
of the HBR to see the pendulum swinging across the pseudo-crisis landscape.
Point out to your consultant friend that if his clients are the
"leadership" of an organization of greater than 350 participants or an
organization that has more than three levels of managment then the client
is not really leading anything except his own popularity campaign. He may
be the only one allowed to handle the tiller but the fact is the rudder is
no longer attached. The only thing he (or she) is leading is the march
toward "restructuring costs" -- the Annual Report euphamism for OOPS!
Leadership is everywhere, in every human spirit. It is a shame that this
spirit can be so easily suppressed when a group of people are organ--ized
improperly.
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