Epic Think Tank
Leadership and e-learning
Part 1: Leaders v managers
- What is the difference between leadership and management?
Leadership = vision, creativity, inspiration
Management = structure, process, accountability
Leadership and Management can be seen as two extremes of a spectrum
of human qualities essential to organisational success. An effective
organisation will need to cover both poles. Right now, however,
leadership is perceived as the more important due to the pace of
change organisations are facing.
The 'vision thing' was picked up on as a key attribute of leaders,
provoking the following exchange of epigrams:
'Vision without action is a dream; action without vision is a
nightmare.'
'…And vision without effective resourcing is a hallucination!'
Clearly, vision means different things in different organisational
contexts. But it also emerged that there was debate about what level
of the organisation might best benefit from this quality, the top
or the bottom.
Consensus emerged, however, on one point. Whatever leadership might
be, it was definitely bound up with change.
Management was defined as dealing with the known, whereas leadership
was dealing with the unknown. This is the process of change. In
the unknown lies risk, so dealing with risk as a necessary component
of change becomes a key focus for leadership.
An interesting comparison emerged between banking and the military
- areas where management of risk is viewed as an absolutely core
activity, but each of which has an entirely different relationship
with risk.
Banking as we know it has been going for about 300 years, and for
298 of those years it changed very little. During the last two,
of course, it has changed beyond recognition: banking is currently
in a 'white water' period of rapid and far-reaching change. This
is proving difficult to cope with for an industry which has always
been focussed on quantifying and managing risk to maintain a 'steady
state'.
The army, by comparison, spends the majority of the time in steady
state, recovering from or preparing for the 'white water periods'
where risk intensifies and leadership comes to the fore. During
the white water period it performs very effectively ('we do uncertainty
quite well'). But in contrast to banking, the military has challenges
dealing with long periods of steady state, in which a more managerial
approach is often required.
From consideration of these two examples emerged some instructive
points about the dynamic of the leadership/management dichotomy:
- You need a different type of leader for the white water periods
- These white water periods are times of accelerated learning
for organisations - and the lessons that are learned in these
times of chaotic change become routinised as process
- When an organisation needs to learn rapidly, leaders come to
the fore. As soon as the organisation has learned how to do something,
it becomes a management task
- Leaders thrive in periods of change and uncertainty: good leaders
naturally tend to provoke change. 'If you're a good rafter, increase
the white water periods'. Leaders are agents for change.
So change is the natural element of leaders, and leading change
is a function of organisational learning. The stage seemed set for
a discussion of learning in relationship to leadership -
…so what is the best way to develop people as leaders?
Next>>
Background
Part 2 Developing Leaders
Part 3 Putting the 'e' in Leadership
Afterword
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