A Huge Difference
Do you wand to be a leader or a manager? You need to make a
choice as there is a huge difference. "The world is full of
managers and
desperately short of leaders - real
leaders."6
Today's World Realities
In
today's new economy, the old ways of management no longer work and will never work
again. The magnitude and pressure of environmental, competitive, and global
market change we are experiencing is unprecedented. It's a very interesting
and exciting world, but it's also volatile and chaotic. You cannot address
these new challenges with more of the same management solutions - successful
change requires leadership.
Psychological research has shown that "under circumstances of
uncertainty or unusual challenge and difficulty, people look for help in
understanding questions about what matters, what to do, what direction to
take, and what they should not do. Providing people with the answers that
help them with these difficult questions is the essence of leadership."5
Leading Change
Leadership is about getting people to abandon their old habits and
achieve new things, and therefore largely about change - about
inspiring, helping, and sometimes enforcing change in people. "While there can be effective management absent ideas, there
can be no true leadership".4
So, To Lead or To Manage?
You need both. The old proverb says that leadership is doing the right
thing; management is doing things right. The difference between the two is
not as sharp as the saying would suggest, and both are required for
effective corporate growth: leadership risk creates opportunities while
management strictness turns them into tangible results.
However, "if your organization is not on a journey don't bother
about leadership - just settle for management", advises John Adair.
"There is a direct correlation between the way people view
their managers and the way they perform."1
Strong leadership is imperative for shaping a group of people
into a force that serves as a competitive business advantage".1
Case in Point:
25
Lessons from Jack Welch
Jack Welch's goal was to make General Electric (GE) "the world's most
competitive enterprise." He knew that it would take nothing less than a "revolution"
to transform that dream into a reality. "The model of business in corporate
America in 1980 had not changed in decades. Workers worked, managers
managed, and everyone new their place. Forms and approvals and bureaucracy
ruled the day." Welch's self-proclaimed revolution meant waging war on GE's
old ways of doing things and reinventing the company from top to bottom.
Jack Welch is all about leadership, not management. Actually,
he wanted to discard the term "manager" altogether because it had come to
mean someone who "controls rather than facilitates, complicates rather than
simplifies, acts more like a governor than an accelerator." Welch has give a
great of thought to how to manage employees effectively so that they are as
productive as possible. An he has come to a seemingly paradoxical view. The
less managing you do the better off your company. Manage less to manage
more.
Welch decided that GE's leaders, who did too much controlling
and monitoring, had to change their management styles. "Managers
slow things down. Leaders spark the business to run smoothly, quickly.
Managers talk to one another, write memos to one another. Leaders talk to
their employees, talk with their
employees, filling them with vision, getting them to perform at levels the
employees themselves didn't think possible. Then (and to Welch this is a
critical ingredient) they simply get out of the way."7 ...More
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