Management vs Leadership

Excerpts from this weeks I, Cringely . The Pulpit | PBS


"Management is telling people what to do, which is a vital part of any
industrial economy. Leadership is figuring out what ought to be done
then getting people to do it, which is very different."

"Modern corporations suffer from systemic-level issues that emerge in
top-down hierarchies. Managers are there to control staff and budgets,
not to lead. Although you can make valiant and often successful
attempts to control things and processes, you will never again be able
to control people. We've evolved, basically, and the information age
has had a lot to do with it. So we still "manage" companies the same
way as when we actually operated assembly lines in America--the good
old days! Now, people need leaders, not managers, and that's what a
fractal organization enables.

"Most start-ups are fractal in their nature, especially those that
have exciting visions and get everyone on the same page with collective
purpose, goals, and objectives. Most investors, however, are bought
into the conventional org chart; when the company devolves into
top-down, the turnover begins. That's because of the internal
competition that emerges in top-down organizations. The perception is
that there's only so much room at the top. At each level of management,
the competition increases as cooperation decreases. Thus are created
the ubiquitous "silos" of information that thwart collaboration and
encourage redundant, wasteful business practices.

"Managers are
supposedly promoted because of their ability to outperform others and
not because of an intention to provide inspiration, guidance, and
mentoring to their staff, nor are they openly rewarded for this
behavior, even though it usually produces a healthier bottom line. The
usual way of rewarding based upon meeting financial goals and managing
budgets keeps the focus on short-term financial results only, whereas
continuous improvement leadership by frontline staff creates more
long-term successes.

"When managers don't mentor staff, focusing
only upon numbers and bossing people around, it leads to an illusion of
control, of which there's no such thing. In these situations, they
begin to feel they must continually prove their worthiness and so
defend their territories against possibly brilliant staff working
"beneath" them. This is a systemic issue, not a personality quirk,
though some personalities are more susceptible than others. In most
companies, the idea of climbing over others on your way to the top and
throwing people who get in your way under buses is de rigueur. The
top-down hierarchy was designed to manage industrial-age processes, not
information-age challenges. You didn't want the door guy getting
creative when attaching the door. Nor did he need to collaborate with
the bumper dude. The information age is vastly different. Each scene
we're in presents new circumstances and opportunities.