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.