What is Management?
- Effective management requires a different set of skills from leadership.
- Managers promote efficiency to deliver on today's goals, to execute existing directions - leaders generate new directions.
- Getting the best performance out of people means achieving today's targets and is therefore a management task.
- Anything to do with making decisions to allocate resources, motivate or develop people is a matter for management.
- Leadership, by contrast, is about influencing people to change direction.
- When senior executives decide to change direction, this is seen as leadership.
- A decision is made to emphasize a different market segment or product group.
- But such a decision (simply because it is a decision) is an investment decision - not leadership.
- Decisions flow from authority, leadership is an act of persuasion.
- Leadership, by contrast, is always an attempt to influence followers. It is never a decision of any sort. All decisions made by executives are managerial actions.
- There are managerial task skills and people skills. The focus here is on people skills. Task skills include how to manage projects, etc.
The Meaning of Management
We need to understand the meaning of management in order to know what management skills to develop. Think of what is means to be an investor - someone with money to invest and wanting the best return. Such a person shifts his or her money around regularly to improve return.
Similarly, managers have resources at their disposal to invest - people, material and a budget, in addition to their own time and energy. Smart managers think carefully on a regular basis about how to get the best return on these resources. In the case of human resources, it is not just a matter of having the right employee in the right place at the right time, it is also about developing and improving that resource.
Effective managers are catalysts, brokers, facilitators, coaches and people developers. Because thinking is the most important work we do today, managers need to ask stimulating questions to draw new solutions out of people, to get mental work done through them. This makes managers faciltators more than decision makers as they were thought of in the old days. Certainly they still make decisions, but ineffective managers do too much of their own thinking, hence not reaping the fullest possible return of all resources at their disposal. They are poor investors as a result.
Effective managers know that delegation is not enough in today's knowledge driven world to get work done through people. This is because most of the critical work we do today is to make decisions, solve problems and think creatively. This is mental work. Smart managers get this kind of work done through people by asking them the sorts of questions that stimulate people to think, to draw solutions out of people. Ineffective managers may delegate a lot but this is so they can be free to do most of their own thinking and problem solving. They fail to work with and through people when it comes to this mental work. Skilled managers know how to get the best out of people by asking them the right questions - those that make them think differently, not simply fact-gathering questions.
Management needs to be upgraded for the 21st century. It needs to cast off its negative image as mechanistic, controlling and task oriented. We need a concept of management that makes it nurturing, supportive, coaching and developmental. This is essential to divide the load between leadership and management more equally.
What's the difference between managers and leaders?
- It's not a matter of personality or style: how they influence you.
- It 's purely about what they focus on.
- Leaders focus on devising or championing new directions
- Managers execute or implement existing directions and maintain efficient operations.
- A highly motivational manager is not a leader if the focus is on improving performance.
- Anybody who advocates new directions through innovation no matter how quietly is attempting to lead others.
- This functional definition implies that personality alone isn't a differentiating factor.
- Simply put: leaders direct, managers execute.
- To clarify: managers also provide direction but only on HOW to execute efficiently.
- Leaders provide NEW directions.
- Management is like investment - you want to invest all resources at your disposal as efficiently as possible in order to get the best return on them you can.
- Strictly speaking, you don't even have to have subordinates to be a manager - every employee has resources to dispose - time, talent, energy, organizational resources, etc.
- However, the term manager is normally reserved for a formal role in a hierarchy.
- Leadership is not about occupying a role - it's about doing something different.
- This leaves a question - there are two types of new direction - innovation in products that take organizations into new markets and changes that improve what you are doing now.
- The latter is a mixture of leadership and better management.
- This is a functional definition of leadership and management, just like sales and marketing which are defined by the purpose or function they serve in organizations.
- We can also distinguish between content and process leadership.
- The content leader takes the organization in completely new directions.
- The process leader improves how the organization executes existing directions.
- Most senior executives show more process than content leadership. Depending on the industry and the degree to which the organization competes on the basis of innovation as opposed to being a low cost, quality producer, executives will vary the % of time they spend on each of these functions.
- In banks where changes in fundamental direction are infrequent, top executives are mainly managers mainly showing process leadership, rarely content leadership.
- In a software company, the percentages will be reversed because new directions have to be devised continuously to compete effectively.
- This might sound strange because we are so accustomed to seeing an executive as a leader solely because of his or her personality or position.
- Naturally, some people will be more disposed to breaking new ground (content leadership) while others will excel at doing familiar things efficiently (management) or initiating changes to improve the efficiency of execution (process leadership).
- But the definitions of leadership and management revolve around their output or focus, not input, ie. personality.
The following pages will help you improve your skills in empowering employees, delegating, team building, coaching and much more. Read on and enjoy
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