Leadership and Management

Leadership and Management: What is the difference? 

Often leadership and management are treated as if they were one and the same, 'being in charge'. A commonly used definition is that management is about 'doing things right' whereas leadership is about 'doing the right things'. In business this means that management is concerned with the efficiency of the daily operational processes, while leadership is dealing with the direction the organization follows, the effectiveness of the organization. Managers plan, control, coach, motivate and evaluate. Leaders look ahead, develop vision and strategy, communicate and inspire.

A 'Hate - love' relationship 

Managers want a stable situation in order to be able to manage things efficiently. Change disturbs stability and that's why managers are not particularly amused with the leaders' ambition to change what we have. But for leaders, what we have is not good enough. A clear difference of interest, but at the same time they can't do without each other. In order to change leaders need to invest, they need cash. Managers generate that cash. But if managers would stick to their 'business as usual' and would never change, we would certainly go out of business eventually.

No. 1 Organizations do both 

Not so many organizations tend to forget to run their daily business. But how about that other activity: considering the course you are going? Jim Collins - author of Built to Last and Good to Great - concluded that No. 1 companies spend more time on investing in structural improvement of their organizations. Or in other words, they make room for leadership next to management. Collins introduced the concept of 'clock building'. Imagine that an organization would have someone that always tells you the exact time if you ask him how late it is. Would we always bother him when we would want to know what time it is? Or would we leave him alone to allow him to build a clock? So that we all just have to look at the clock to know what time it is, even if our 'time teller' is not around.

No.1 companies build clocks. The quality of the organization depends on structure, not on persons or ideas. Structure versus daily operations. Leadership and management.

For an overview of the differences between leadership and management see overview