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Dear CEO (and any other business leader who cares to read over your shoulder),
You've been given some very bad advice. It's this very advice that, if you follow it, will be your undoing...
I just read in one of your CEO periodicals that one key to your success is, "understanding the difference between leadership and management."
Ugh! I've heard this for so many years.
Many leadership trainers present it as if you can make a choice between the two-be a leader or a manager. You know, leadership is the "vision thing" and management-well that's the day to day minutia of managing people and running a business.
And, of course, that the CEO should be the "leader" and leave the management to others.
Let me be clear: If you listen to that advice you will be packing up your office sooner than you'd like.
Let me be clear again: Management is one aspect and one expression of leadership. It is a leadership skill, a leadership tool. It is not not leadership.
Having and communicating a vision is a leadership skill. Decision making is a leadership skill. Planning is a leadership skill. Goal setting is a leadership skill. Management is another leadership skill, as important, if not more so, than all the others.
It's when CEOs forget to manage that they get in the most trouble. People are business' greatest and most important and most expensive resource...and they must be managed.
That starts with the senior team...more pointedly with the CEO.
A 2003 study from Fortune Magazine bares this out and jibes well with my 16 years of experience working with CEOs.
The study revealed the top two reasons CEOs fail. It's not because of a dearth of intelligence, or the vision thing. It isn't poor ethics, bad business acumen or bad decision making or goal setting.
Nope, the top two reasons they fail are these:
- They do a poor job of matching skills and positions, i.e. they hire, promote and delegate to the wrong people. That, Mr. or Ms. CEO, is a function of management.
- They don't deal with people problems soon enough. Woe! Management again!
So if someone suggests that you focus on leadership instead of management they are advising you right out of a job.
Too often when one becomes a CEO it's as if they breathe a sigh of relief. Now they don't have to manage anymore; they can leave that to others, like they are above all that.
It's certainly convenient for CEOs to pontificate about the difference between management and leadership.
After all, if you view yourself as a leader and not a manager, you can justify less visibility, average people skills, not holding people accountable, not rolling up your sleeves when there is conflict, not giving the pats on the back, leaving vital communication to others, etc.
In addition, you get to hide away in your office and play the mystery boss. Stare at spreadsheets, marketing plans and building blueprints instead of developing people. You know, leave the petty minutia of management to lesser humans.
I only tell you this, CEO, because someone had to.
I've seen firsthand the abdication of the CEO of his or her management responsibilities. I've seen the dysfunction it causes on the senior level and the frustration beneath.
Ultimately, I've seen it be the end for too many otherwise capable CEOs.
Don't let it be yours.
Just trying to help.
Your friend,
Doug
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