too much leadership and not enough management
Compared to management, leadership has a certain mystical quality. But mysticality doesn't help get the job done.
“He’s a manager, not a leader,” my interlocutor explained to me, speaking about the IT director in a dismissive tone.
I conducted several dozen more interviews using the 360-degree assessment method, in other words, I talked to a large number of different people – and confirmed the diagnosis.
Except for one thing: The CIO's focus on management was, in technical terms, “a good thing.” Because what's often overlooked in the endless debate about leadership versus management is that management is about getting things done. Leadership is an important set of techniques that managers use to motivate people in the company to embrace the direction they are trying to set.
And that really helps get the job done. It's an important factor, but not the main one.
Leadership vs. Management
I will now blame Peter Drucker, who will not be able to defend himself, since he is no longer with us. It was Drucker who famously said: “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
I have nothing against this division of labor. It's just that when you compare the importance of “doing the right thing” versus “getting things done,” it's important not to neglect how important “getting things done” is.
One source of this disrespect is a popular myth about the effectiveness of organizational consulting—that there are many activities in an organization that should not be improved because they are not worth doing. We consultants are well armed with witty stories about past clients in which we have discovered an example of something that should not have been done.
But, as the saying goes, personal stories don't convey enough information; and too often it turns out that the “what not to do” is something the management consultant doesn't know well enough to appreciate its value.
Through “management,” those in charge make sure that the organization is really working as it should. So why does leadership acquire a mystical quality?
It all starts, I think, with a fundamental misunderstanding. To return to Drucker, it is easy to draw the wrong conclusion: if leadership does the right thingand management does them rightthen without leaders to guide them, managers will do the wrong things right, stubbornly dragging the entire company in the wrong direction.
But it would be an unusual organization if its leaders, lacking common sense, genuinely had no idea of the right direction. And in any case, it is extremely rare that there is only one right direction, rather than several promising alternatives.
How does strategy fit in?
Thus, more often than not, leaders do not invent strategy but choose one from among several alternative options, leaving the hard work of implementing the strategy to the managers who report to them.
So why is leadership such a hot topic? A cynic might suggest that the more valued completing of the workthe more the company should pay those who do the work; which in turn would mean that those who manage the execution of work would be paid more than those who think and charismatically express deep and inspiring thoughts.
And since there are more people doing the work than there are managing it, respect for the work and those who do it will come at a high price.
Don't get me wrong. True leadership is hard work, and because leadership is so much about people rather than processes, tools, and technology, it's also time-consuming. In fact, when I teach leadership workshops, the biggest obstacle to success for most participants is time management.
Leadership involves setting direction, making or facilitating decisions, recruiting, delegating, motivating, overseeing team dynamics, shaping business culture, and communicating. Leaders who want to excel at their craft need to decide how much time they plan to devote to each of these eight tasks, which is a difficult decision.
Then they have to figure out where to get that time from—which is even more difficult because their calendars are already full or nearly full.
Management, on the other hand, is about organizing, controlling processes, and implementing new tools that improve productivity and efficiency—the well-known mantra of “people, processes, technology” comes to mind. Its time budget is somewhat compressed.
Thus, management includes leadership as one of the responsibilities that professionals must possess. In this regard, it deserves more respect than the good old “They are managers, but they must be leaders.”
On the other hand, people are more complex than the processes and technologies that make up the non-leadership aspects of management, and so, in addition to being more time-consuming than managing, leadership also requires a softer, more empathic approach.
Which is more important? It doesn't really matter. Those in charge must respect both leaders and managers. And they must respect those they lead and direct—the people who actually do the work.
The main value and the main resource in IT are, of course, people. Their motivation largely determines whether your project/product/division/company will be successful or not.
The Delivery Manager has an advantageous position for creating and monitoring motivation. We invite everyone to an open lesson on July 24, where we will discuss:
how to determine the level of employee motivation;
what characterizes different levels of loyalty;
how to make loyalty monitoring fair;
what motivates your employees to share their wealth.
As a bonus, the speaker will share with the participants tools and examples of creating loyalty monitoring forms. You can sign up for the lesson on the “Delivery Manager” course page.
