I have pondered the relationship between Leadership and Management for many years now, and in conversation with colleagues I have come to realize that the relationship is murky at the best of time. Given the digital world we work in, and the speed in which we need to transact our business activity, creating clearer perspectives becomes challenging. I took some time recently and unplugged from my social media and put together my thoughts on how we can create a greater level of clarity on the relationship between Leadership & Management as it manifests itself from the Strategic Organizational level, right through to the Personal and Professional level.
If organizations and the people that populate them are premised on Managing their current business (or personal) activities in an effort to get things done, then, in the simplest of terms, Management is about maintaining our current position and protecting existing cash flows in an efficient and effective manner. While this is important, by itself it is not the sufficient condition, as organizations (and people as well) need to continually grow and advance their position in ever changing markets. As such, advancing our position requires that we examine things that could be, but are not yet being done. This requires Leadership activities that explore and assess alternatives and/or new ways and means for the organization (or self) in an effort to sustain or continually grow. Best advancement options can be refined, selected and then, at the right point, managed into the organization in an engaging manner.
So in the distillation of this, so that we can in a snap review what we are doing at any given time, we look at the relationship between Leadership & Management as: Leadership - Advancing Activities Management - Maintaining Activities. I have written a brief on this for those that would like a bit more detail (click to download the brief), but thought I would share these thoughts to see if others have an interest in discussing... Cheers.
If organizations and the people that populate them are premised on Managing their current business (or personal) activities in an effort to get things done, then, in the simplest of terms, Management is about maintaining our current position and protecting existing cash flows in an efficient and effective manner. While this is important, by itself it is not the sufficient condition, as organizations (and people as well) need to continually grow and advance their position in ever changing markets. As such, advancing our position requires that we examine things that could be, but are not yet being done. This requires Leadership activities that explore and assess alternatives and/or new ways and means for the organization (or self) in an effort to sustain or continually grow. Best advancement options can be refined, selected and then, at the right point, managed into the organization in an engaging manner.
So in the distillation of this, so that we can in a snap review what we are doing at any given time, we look at the relationship between Leadership & Management as: Leadership - Advancing Activities Management - Maintaining Activities. I have written a brief on this for those that would like a bit more detail (click to download the brief), but thought I would share these thoughts to see if others have an interest in discussing... Cheers.
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