Leadership vs Management..........

A number of people responded to my last blog in which I tried to argue for taking management more seriously. One of the questions raised was 'what about leadership'? So here goes.....

Management is about making the business work, setting goals, hitting targets, doing what it says on the can - results to expectations. Leadership I think is about making the organisation better. Its about improvement and change - results beyond expectations.

Leadership was once portrayed as the characteristics people needed to be leaders. The problem was that many great leaders had not heard about the characteristics they were 'supposed to have' yet were still highly successful!

Leadership is now seen as producing results. Its what leaders do rather than who they are that matters.

So what do they actually do? Usually they start with a vision of where they want to take the organisation. They create a strategy. They also develop a culture of how they want the organisation to behave.

The better leaders 'become the strategy and culture', in other words, they champion it. They insist that the business changes in order to deliver the strategy rather than the other way around. In doing this they are able to transform and change organisations.

There, leadership done!