Why Separate Leadership and Management?
- Because all organizations have two fundamentally different tasks:
- to execute today's business as efficiently as possible
- to devise new directions for future success - innovation.
- This has become increasingly obvious as more and more emphasis is placed on innovation as a major source of competitive advantage.
- It makes sense, therefore, to align the managerial function with executing today's business and leadership with generating new directions.
- Clearly, management is a set of responsibilities because you have to be organized and systematic to deliver agreed outcomes and other people expect this of you.
- Conversely, leadership is an episodic act like creativity that some people will exhibit some times and not other times - it is not a position of responsibility.
- Getting clear about this distinction is important for strategic reasons - it helps us to focus our energies where we can gain the greatest potential payback. Executives who think they are leading when they are only managing are blocking the leadership of others and hence potentially limiting the innovation their organizations need to survive. They also run the risk of creating excessive dependency on themselves among others.
- When leadership and management are clearly differentiated, you must identify areas for change and have the courage to champion them to show leadership. No longer can you call yourself a leader simply because you are an good manager.
- At the same time, effective, profitable execution is just as important for busines success as generating the future. It is time to raise the profile of managers and stop the bandwagon which is compelling everyone to call themselves leaders, as if managers are somehow lower class citizens or nonfunctional elements.
- Hence it is vital to differentiate between leadership and management - one serves the function of finding a new direction, the other the function of getting us there efficiently.
- While one person can, in principle, perform both functions, only one person would normally be the manager of a group.
- Conversely, leadership can be shown by all and it can shift from one person to another rapidly in any given context.
When you think of leadership do you have a particular ideal in mind? What is your image of the ideal leader?
Do you think its possible for management to shed its negative image and be reinvented for the 21st century and, even better, finally differentiated from leadership? See article that tries to show how this is possible: Leadership and Management Reinvented. Do you think women might be better leaders than men or vice versa. See Are Women Better Leaders than Men? and Is Leadership Feminine?