In the words of both Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, āManagement is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.ā Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
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To paraphrase the Nobel acceptance speech of Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek:
If managers are to do more good than harm in improving organizational performance, they must learn that in a complex environment, they canāt acquire sufficient knowledge to orchestrate the desired outcomes. Instead, they must use whatever knowledge they have not to shape results as a craftsman shapes a piece of handiwork, but to cultivate growth by providing a proper environment, much as a gardener does for plants.
As individuals, groups, and businesses, weāre often so busy cutting through the undergrowth we donāt even realize weāre in the wrong jungle. And the rapidly changing environment in which we live makes effective leadership more critical than it has ever beenāin every aspect of independent and interdependent life. We are more in need of a vision or destination and a compass (a set of principles or directions) and less in need of a road map. We often donāt know what the terrain ahead will be like or what we will need to go through it; much will depend on our judgment at the time. But an inner compass will
always give us direction.
But leadership is hard because weāre often caught in a management paradigm.
And leadership is even more lacking in our personal lives. Weāre into managing with efficiency, setting and achieving goals before we have even clarified our values.
Habit 4: Think Win/Win - Principles of Interpersonal Leadership
āAs with many, many problems between people in business, family, and other relationships, the problem in this company was the result of a flawed paradigm. The president was trying to get the fruits of cooperation from a paradigm of competition. And when it didnāt work, he wanted a technique, a program, a quick fix antidote to make his people cooperate. But you canāt change the fruit without changing the root. Working on the attitudes and behaviors would have been hacking at the leaves. So we focused instead on producing personal and organizational excellence in an entirely different way by developing information and reward systems which reinforced the value of cooperation.