To build a solid culture that will stay true to its values, yet flexible enough to grow with the company you need get past the idea that positional leaders don’t need management skills or that managers don’t lead.

Jim Stroup, who wrote a blog called Managing Leadership, the archives of which contain tremendously useful information on leadership and management for bosses at all levels, used to point out in numerous posts the absurdity of separating the two.

“No one has proven that leadership is different from management, much less that it is a characteristic inherent in individuals independently of the context in which those individuals operate, one that they carry with them from one organization to another and which they then instill into groups otherwise bereft of it.”

A comment left on a 2008 Washington Post column by Steve Pearlstein regarding the leadership failure that led to the economic crisis neatly sums up the problem with defining leaders based on their vision and skill at influencing people to follow them.

“What a great summary of the economic problem. However this was not a lack of leadership. Defining leadership as influencing people to move in a specific direction, the financial and economic elite successfully led the country into the economic disaster. The problem was a lack of management that failed to identify the signs of the pending disaster.”

Honing the skills to only do one or the other well short-changes your people and your company — but it’s how you win.

Being proficient in both leading and managing will

• prevent visions from blindsiding you;
• provide strong motivation;
• increase productivity and creative thinking;
• create an environment in which people are challenged and grow to their true potential;
• ensure a higher level of personal satisfaction; and
• increase your tangible rewards.

And if those 6 results don’t motivate you, the sophistication and mobility of today’s workforce certainly should.

Image credit: Rodney Campbell

I frequently hear from managers in nonprofits that it’s frustrating that so much of the management information available can’t really be implemented in their specialized environment.

I was dumbfounded the first time I heard that and asked why not; I’ve ask the same question every time since (a lot of times) and get similar answers.

These usually fall in one of two broad categories

• they are focused on “doing good” unlike “business;” and/or
• they are staffed by volunteers.

I have an accounting friend who hears similar reactions when he insists on good accounting practices and financial controls.

Many say that they are more comfortable with leadership advice, since communicating a vision is part of their job description, but setting standards, developing and implementing accountability and then holding people to them feels too “corporate.”

When this happens I usually refer them to take a look at the path blazed by the Robin Hood Foundation and, more recently, read the interview with Tachi Yamada, M.D., president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program

These five random comments from Yamada are no different than what you’ll hear from any manager skilled in driving innovation, productivity and finding solutions through his people.

• I think the most difficult transition for anybody from being a worker bee to a manager is this issue of delegation. What do you give up? How can you have the team do what you would do yourself without you doing it?
• That probably was the most important lesson I learned — that what’s out there is more important than what you already know, and that you’d better go out and learn what it is out there that you don’t know.
• So what I learned from him is that when you actually are with somebody, you’ve got to make that person feel like nobody else in the world matters. (no cell no blackberry)
• One of the things I’ve learned is that you can’t go into an organization, fire everybody and bring in everybody you want. You have to work with the people you have. … Everybody has their good points. Everybody has their bad points. If you can bring out the best in everybody, then you can have a great organization.

Read the interview and understand that what he talks about applies equally well to small, local non-profits as it does to the multibillion dollar organization he runs—not to mention for-profit businesses of any size.

Image credit: saschapohflepp on flickr

Every time I hear a pundit ask a (positional) leader about her vision or Wall Street condemns someone for not having a vision that they consider viable I find myself wanting to bop the questioner.

I’m not into visions.

Visions are what Sherlock Holmes had when he was smoking opium; they’re what dance in kids heads before Christmas; they’re what the religious see on slices of bread and potato chips.

There’s an old saying that the difference between a dream and a goal is a plan.

I equate visions to dreams until there’s an executable plan and management with the moxie to implement it. (That’s why I don’t believe we’ll see universal healthcare any time soon—lots of visions, lots of rhetoric, little management and less moxie.)

Of course, you have to use the lingua franca of the day when communicating and that means calling your goal a vision, which is fine—as long as you really understand what’s required to make it a reality.

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Image credit: ZedBee|Zoë Power on flickr