In the Industrial Age, Management and Leadership were opposed.
Management was tweaking the process to gain efficiency. That was a hands-on, hence dirty job. Reserved for young people or people that could not get promoted.
Leadership was the clean realm of ideas. After a certain age you got promoted in leadership position. No more concern about the dirt. Just ideas, concepts, vision.
Transition between management and leadership was a crisis. You needed to stop doing things by yourself.
Well today it has become clear that everybody, anywhere in the organization, needs to have some leadership skills and use them when needed. And everybody needs to have management skills when it comes to improving the efficiency and reducing waste and effort for the same result.
Managers that cannot lead are boring, and dangerous for themselves. They don’t see that the world around them is changing and that the important thing is not just to optimize their little corner.
Above all, leaders that cannot manage are boring and dangerous for the organization. They become so far away from reality that they can make terribly wrong decisions.
Every day there are times we need to be managers, times we need to lead. There are also times we need to be simply human.
When do we start to be flexible and do systematically both some leading, and some managing in our normal day? When do you start to lead?
