LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT

image:cqeacademy.com
culled from:www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army/cmd-hdbk.pdf

Management's primary focus is on the conceptual side of the business, such as planning, organizing, and budgeting. It does the leg work to make visions reality. Do NOT equate the term “management" with “controlling people." Management is more about ensuring that the organization's resources are allocated wisely, rather than trying to control people. In fact, good managers know that trying to control others is extremely difficult if not impossible.

Management helps to acquire, integrate, and allocate resources in order to accomplish goals and task. Going back to the above example of increasing informal learning by implementing a new social media tool, the managers must look at the real goal, rather than the tool. The real goal is to increase informal learning and human interactions in order to make them more effective, not to put into place a media tool.

If the tool becomes the primary goal, then the wrong polices could be put into place that decrease its value as an informal learning tool, for example, implementing a policy that no one in the company can ask a question on Twitter as it might make us look stupid or our competitors will know what we are trying to do. This policy removes the real purpose of the tool—enabling the employees to learn informally from each other.

Secondly, if the focus is only on the tool, then other options are omitted, such as tearing down cubicles and creating spaces where people can meet.

In contrast, Leadership deals with the interpersonal relations such as being a teacher and coach, instilling organizational spirit to win, and serving the organization and workers. For more information see, The Complete Guide to Leadership.
The Synergy of the Four Pillars

While all four processes have their place, they are not implemented separately, but rather in concert. Using the example of implementing a new social media tool for increasing informal learning:

    Command communicates the vision or goal to the best people who can implement it. Throughout the process, it adjusts to new knowledge and refines the vision.
    Management allocates the resources and helps to organize the activities that will make it a reality. This is normally a continuous process, rather than a single activity.
    Leadership helps to guide, coach, and motivate the people to do their best throughout the entire process.
    Control looks for opportunities to reduce risks, which in turn makes the process more efficient.

The four pillars need to be in harmony with each other. As the diagram below show, when one or more of them is too strong, the organization falls out of balance:

Dangers of ineffective of Command, Control, Management, and Leadership processes, when one or two are too strong.

Likewise, if any of the pillars become too weak, it drives the organization out of balance: