The Fable of Napoleon's Lieutenant

I don't take credit for this one. This is one of the leadership lessons I learned at West Point.

Napoleon routinely picked the dumbest soldier in his army and appointed him lieutenant on his personal staff. Before issuing an order to his army, he would give the order to this lieutenant and then ask the lieutenant to repeat it back. If the lieutenant made a mistake, Napoleon would re-write the order until the lieutenant got it right. Napoleon's reasoning was that if the lieutenant could understand the order, then surely his generals could also understand the order.

The moral of the story is that it is not the manager's responsibility to give instructions that can be understood, but rather, the manager's responsibility is to give instructions that cannot be misunderstood.

Admittedly, This is a difficult skill for managers to learn. The primary barrier is embarrassment. The manager is embarrassed to ask for the employee's to provide feed back since this can show that the manager does not know how to communicate. The employee is embarrassed to provide feedback since this can show that the employee does not understand. For both sides, there is a possibility for this exercise to expose weakness. However, if the manager and employee can conduct this exercise routinely, then both will gain trust with each other and both will learn how to communicate better.

There is also a discussion on LinkedIn.

Leadership and Management are just the Tip...

Third of a series of three: Leadership Vs. Management, Beyond Leadership and Management, and Leadership and Management are just the Tip...

I agree that leadership and management are necessary at all levels. However, at the top level, I don't believe they are sufficient.

I understand the temptation to lump all of a chief's skills under the topic of either leadership or management. I prefer to organize them this way for a number of reasons.

This layout reflects the growth of skills needed by the chief as the size or complexity of the organization grows. At the lowest level, the chief is influencing individuals. At the mid level, the chief is influencing teams. At the highest level, the chief is influencing the environment.

It is difficult to comprehend large lists. With this layout, you only have four things to pay attention to at any moment. If you need to drill down on any one, then you have only 4 more. Instead of 2x30, where 30 is an absurdly large number, you have 4x4x4. Also, it is difficult to comprehend the interconnectedness of various skills if they are all lumped into only two groups.

I like to recognize that a chief at the highest level has multi-dimensional problems to solve. To solve them, the chief must bring in multi-dimensional solutions. These come from a multi-dimensional skill set.

As you grow in responsibility, a number of necessary skills do not fall into either camp of leadership or management. Perhaps they fall into both: such as the ability to think strategically. Perhaps they fall into neither: such as diplomacy.

Chiefs are initially successful because they can provide a key skill to a key need. But what happens then? Over time, the key need changes. What happens when the chief is missing the key skill for the next key need? By periodic reviews of skills and needs, the chief can develop additional skills over time.

The prime indicator that a chief has reached this level is that they are more focused on their environment rather then focused on their organization.

The main goal of the chief as they approach this level is to ensure subordinate chiefs have all the skills necessary to be an organizational level chief. Their subordinate teams should have the responsibility and authority to take independent action.

Admittedly, it is difficult for a chief to be skilled in all of these items. Aids can provide strength to cover weaknesses. Coaches can identify emergent scenarios where the chief's skills are weak for an emergent need.

I would like to thank William Howard and others for commenting on Leadership v Management. I will be approaching my LinkedIn network for additional definitions of leadership.

Beyond Leadership and Management

Second of a series of three: Leadership Vs. Management, Beyond Leadership and Management, and Leadership and Management are just the Tip...

Based on feedback from the first post in this series, Leadership v Management, I have decided to not have separate level-titles. I will now refer to the "responsible-person" at every level as the "Chief."

In the first post in this series, I described the component skills of the leadership and management groups. Though the skills of leadership and management are necessary at all levels, they are not sufficient beyond the team level. As the organization or environment becomes more complex, the chief needs additional skills.

At the Organization level, the chief needs skills in the additional groups of "Goals" and "Teamwork." As chiefs become responsible for more complexity, their component teams must be self-leading and self-managing. However, the chief is responsible to ensure they work together towards common goals.

Skill	Measurement
Management	Efficiency
Leadership	Effort
Teamwork	Ease
Goals	Effect

The key indicator that group is at the organization level is that the Chief does not have direct managerial or leadership influence over all the people. As a rule of thumb this would normally be a third line chief. That works for a large company, but in a smaller company, these skills may be needed at a lower level.

There is a more precise way to determine this. When chiefs give directions to their component teams, they make judgments on who gets to do what based on the component team's capabilities. As the chief measures these capabilities, the critical question is, "are they considering each person in their component teams?" If there are too many people so they only can consider the component team's capabilities, then they are at this level.

Thanks to Mike Kilbane for the primary motivation for dumping the level-title of "Supervisor." I also updated the previous post to accommodate this change.

Leadership Vs. Management

First of a series of three: Leadership Vs. Management, Beyond Leadership and Management, and Leadership and Management are just the Tip...

Leadership

The ability to get someone to do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason, with a sense of purpose, and without being told.

Management

The ability to allocate the right resource to the right task at the right time.

But what comprises Leadership and Management and together, what does this combination represent? Based on my experience, I have come up with the following MECE breakout of the two:

Team Level
Leadership	Duty	<=>	Discipline	Management
	Vision	<=>	Foresight
	Honor	<=>	Detail
	Responsibility	<=>	Control

I am not in the habit of favoring one over the other. I believe these two skills should be in balance.

If you find yourself spending an inordinate amount of time exercising your management skills, consider automating some of your tasks. Otherwise your team will loose the value that good leadership provides.

Likewise, if you might find yourself spending an inordinate amount of time exercising your leadership skills. Please realize leadership is not enough to get the job done. If you are in this position, consider digging deeper into the mechanics of your team's responsibilities. You should find opportunities to generate efficiencies or to expand responsibilities.

Even though those these skills are necessary in all levels of the organization, they are only sufficient for first and second line chiefs. In later posts, I will present expanding sets of skills necessary for greater levels of structure.

Though it is not obvious at this level, I have also applied the principles of fractal analysis to my division of skills. At this level you can see how the various sub-skills are self-similar and are uniformly structured. At the higher levels you will see how I used this technique to map executive level skills. I call this technique conceptual-fractal-analysis since I am applying the principle of fractals to concepts rather then formulas. I learned this technique from Richard Tabor Greene in a class at the University of Chicago about transporting businesses accross cultural barriers. This is a great technique when trying to identify gaps in an organization or when trying to apply an organization's capabilities against a new problem.

As you can see, I do not favor leadership over management. They are both necessary. However, they must be kept in balance and they are used for two different purposes.

Hidden agendas!

A good answer (yeah!) to a question on LinkedIn.