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This is the third in a series discussing whether Warren Bennis’ 13 differences between leaders and managers still holds in light of today’s modern workforce.

The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.

Are you controllable? Will you give your best performance, offer 110% effort or bring your passion to work for someone who doesn’t inspire you or whom you don’t trust? Will you trust a leader who accepts the actions of a micro-manager/bully/control-freak and keeps that person in a role of authority?

The manager accepts reality; the leader investigates it.

In my experience, backed up by my reading, very few breathing people, whether leaders, managers or followers, submissively accept reality as it is without trying, in ways both small and large, to change whatever part they believe needs changing. This seems especially true in the workplace.

What do you think?

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This is the second in a series discussing whether Warren Bennis’ 13 differences between leaders and managers still holds in light of today’s modern workforce.

The manager maintains; the leader develops.

In today’s global economy the company that only maintains fails. And I think that applies to every part of a company—department, group, team. If the person in charge merely maintains, but doesn’t improve the parts and processes of the organization it will be passed by. Moreover, today’s workforce demands professional growth and challenge; the manger who doesn’t know how or spend the effort developing people and providing them with opportunities and help to grow will see only lowering productivity and rising turnover.

The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.

This one really gets me. Today’s workers won’t consider working for a manger who doesn’t focus on people and in the event they do find themselves in that position they start looking as quickly as they can hit ‘send’ on their resume. Moreover, the basis for some of the best innovation and productivity increases stems from a focus on, understanding of and willingness to change systems and structure.

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As mentioned, today starts a seven part series discussing Warren Bennis’ 13 differences between leaders and managers in light of today’s modern workforce. The series will address two items each day and runs through May 9 (except for Sunday and Wednesday, they have their own agendas).

To give us common ground, I’m using these descriptions of leadership as the basis of my comments, but feel free to disagree. Unfortunately, I haven’t found comparable descriptions of managers—if you know of any please share them—so my thoughts are based on the best managers I’ve read about and known.

I sincerely hope that many of you will weigh in with your own thoughts.

The manager administers; the leader innovates

Given the pressure to raise productivity, reduce attrition, cut costs, encourage a “culture of innovation” and in general do more with less how can a manager manage today’s highly mobile, independent workforce without innovating? Nobody can supply the sheer quantity of innovation needed to thrive in today’s global economy, because there is no way for to be knowledgeable of every process, facet, product, market, etc. that is ripe for innovation.

The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.

Copy of what? The nearest leader? Every human has his/her own MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) which is a product of their life experiences and therefore unique; everything they learn is learned through the prism of their MAP. Over the years companies have tried to clone both managers and leaders with little success, while today’s enlightened workforce makes the possibility even more remote.

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If you have less than 100 people and your company is in the US you are, by definition, a small business.

Without your vision, hard work and sheer guts our country would be in far worse shape and our lives would lose much of their richness and depth.

Leadership Turn takes this opportunity to salute the thousands of small businesses that have created “more than nine out of 10 new jobs over the past 15 years.”

Considering what you do for us the name should be National Small Business Thanksgiving Week!

Have you hugged your favorite Small Businesses this week?

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No matter what you call it, eliminating people isn’t the smartest thing to do as statistics show and any employee will tell you—including the ones who aren’t directly affected.

According to Think Before You Fire in Business Week,

“For companies, layoffs are a quick, albeit unpleasant, way to trim costs, right? Not necessarily. A recent study of 200 enterprises found that even a modest downsizing can unleash an exodus of valuable employees. For instance, companies that laid off 0.5% of their staff experienced, on average, a turnover rate of 13%—compared with an average turnover rate of 10.4% at companies that didn’t do layoffs. (Academy of Management Journal)”

And that additional 2.6% of turnover are rarely the folks you’d choose to lose.

Way back in 2001, when thousands were being laid off, Frederick Reichheld, author of The Loyalty Factor (1996) and Loyalty Rules! (2001), showed in carefully researched studies that a 5% improvement in employee retention translates to a 25%-100% gain in earnings.

The two biggest advantages in cutting people are that layoffs take the least creative effort from management and Wall Street approves.

Keeping your people and juicing innovation and productivity when times are difficult takes work—lots of it.

What do you plan to do?

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Sadly, the United States has lost its lead in many areas to Europe, and it seems like another is in the process of falling.

“Last week marked the 22nd anniversary of the glass ceiling’s entrance into our vernacular — a phrase which cleverly described the invisible but extensive impediments to women’s ascent into positions of senior leadership…shattering the ceiling once and for all remains an elusive goal.”

And that’s especially true in the Board room.

Europe is different. In 2003 Norway passed a law “requiring companies to fill 40 percent of corporate board seats with women by 2008,” and has succeeded; Spain passed a similar law with a goal of 2015.

“…in a 2007 study by Catalyst , which examined the financial results of 520 companies over a four-year period, it was found that companies with the highest numbers of women board directors outperformed those with the lowest. While European nations are bringing parity to their businesses, their gains are being measured in terms of both talent and the bottom line.”

It’s hard to understand US corporate reluctance, since the result of adding women does fall straight to the bottom line.

We have the talent; the payoff is proven; do we really need to wait for Europe to kick our tail before we wake up and do something?

What ideas do you have that could turn this around?

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Post from Leadership Turn Image credit: dimshikSorry, I forgot to mention this in the previous post.

I’ve recorded a lot of shows over the years and when I want some company for what I’m doing I pop one in my VCR.

I was watching one recently and realized that there wasn’t even one drug commercial during the entire two hours. It was great.

These days, drug companies spend more than $6 billion a year on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising.

I prefer the thrilling days of yesteryear when there was a ban on DTC drug ads, but alas, Congress ditched it.

However, DTC is a real bone of contention for the FDA.

What do you think about drug advertising?

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As most of you know I’ve been writing a series on healthcare, linking to articles detailing the actions of doctors/healthcare professionals, insurance companies and financial institutions. What’s ahppening as opposed to political retoric of what should happen.

But last night I got to thinking.

The stuff the artilces describe isn’t new, it’s been going on for years. Sure, some are new wrinkles, but in general it’s all been around for quite a while.

Why suddenly all these articles? Why is the light being shown and the rocks turned over? What’s different?

Because it’s an election year? Unlikely, this stuff was going on four years ago, but there were no exposés about medical staff not washing their hands or drug companies financial involvement with doctors starting while they’re still in medical school.

So what’s new? What do you think has changed? What’s going on?

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If it’s not doctors ripping off Medicare it’s disability insurers jacking up Social Security’s overhead in the name of increasing their profits.

According to the New York Times, “The Social Security system is choking on paperwork and spending millions of dollars a year screening dubious applications for disability benefits, according to lawsuits filed by whistle-blowers…The insurers are forcing many people who file disability claims with them to also apply to Social Security — even people who clearly do not qualify for the government program.”

The insurance companies use the simplest, tried-and-true approach around to ‘force’ the applications—threatening to or actually cutting off benefits.

How great is the cost?

“…it costs $1,180, on average, to process a single Social Security disability application to the first decision, usually a rejection. If the applicant persists through the first three levels — the initial review, a reconsideration and a hearing by an administrative law judge — the case will cost the system an average of $4,759″

Insurance companies refer 2.5 million disability applicants a year; considering just the basic processing cost that’s nearly three billion dollars. And since they insist on multiple appeals the cost is far higher. Plus, the extra load slows processing for the truly disabled.

Do the whistleblowers have a valid case? Seems likely since the expert witness for the plaintiffs is the former top administrator of the Social Security disability program Kenneth D. Nibali.

One way to stop this practice would be for Social Security to bill the insurance companies for processing costs on meritless claims.

A radical idea that would never get past the insurance lobby.

Think a bill-back would help? Have a better idea?

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Over at Yielding Wealth, Miranda wondered why “universal healthcare” is such a bogyman considering that “Our education system, police force, and even our mail system is socialized…And, of course, one can’t forget socialized capitalism…Society (via taxpayers) provides subsidies for all sorts of companies — profitable Big Oil and Big Ag concerns come immediately to mind. Some would argue that the Federal Reserve itself is something of a socialist institution…” and, of course, the almost done deal of Bear Sterns/JP Morgan/Federal Reserve with us taxpayers holding the bag.

Actually, I think that Miranda hit on the perfect solution—subsidies!

Where ‘universal healthcare’ is steeped in ideology subsidies are embraced.

Better yet, lets make healthcare an earmark, that way every resolution will fly through congress with nary a peep from any direction.

What do you think?

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