Leadership versus management

This week I want to explain to you the differences between leadership and management, and why it is rare for one person to master both.

Topics:

- I am running late this week, but hope to post two episodes!
- Personally, I am fascinated by the topic of leadership, but less so about management.
- Have you ever thought about the differences between the two?
- In terms of a simple example, a leader can tell you it’s time to travel North, but they have no idea how to get there. That’s where the manager comes in.
- Another way to look at it is a leader sets direction, but a manager organises the execution.
- Therefore in terms of seniority, a leader is more senior and they may delegate the tactical details to several managers within their organisation.
- In military terms, a General is a leader, but a Major or a Lieutenant is a manager.
- One is mainly focused on strategy, while another is focused on tactics.
- Over time, a person’s tactical skills may degrade or become outdated, as new tactics and technologies come along, but they can still remain a valuable team member by focusing on strategic topics, which tend to evolve at a much slower pace.
- For a young leader, the path to a career in leadership is through years of management experience.
- One does not join an army as a general: that rank must be earned via decades of experience.
- If you think about the CEOs of most successful companies, they tend to be quite old. There is a logical reason for this: each grey hair on their heads represents a lesson learned the hard way.
- Frankly speaking, young CEOs worry me, and I am unlikely to join a startup with a young CEO. There are exceptions to every rule, but those rules exist for a reason.
- Leaders should have scars from their failures, they should have grey hair and wrinkles around their eyes. They should be quick to smile, and slow to react.
- Quick reactions are for tactics, not for strategies.
- A CEO is judged over time, not in their first few weeks on the job. Changing strategy takes time, and if the wrong strategy is chosen hastily, or an apparently failing strategy is killed too early before it has had time to succeed, such decisions can prove to be very costly or even fatal.
- In comparison, tactical failures are a lot less costly: you can lose a battle, but still win the war.
- Without the skill of an effective management team however, a leader is lost.
- The leader can say “It’s time to travel North!”, but they have no idea how to get there, what clothes to bring, what the weather will be like, how much food to carry, who should join the expedition team and a hundred other details that require careful management.
- This also explains why it is rare to find a single person who is still, today, an effective manager AND leader.
- It’s a bit of a split-brain problem: the leader is no good at details, but the manager is. Meanwhile the manager is lost in detail, so can miss the overall landscape that the leader is focused on.
- I myself am on the journey from manager to leader in my chosen field of technology, after 20+ years of experience.
- I find my tech skills degrading, as my interpersonal and communication skills are increasing dramatically.
- It’s a fun ride, I recommend it!
- One final difference between leadership and management that we should consider is risk taking: while a manager is typically operating with known inputs and expected outputs, a leader is expected to take some risks, in order to break new ground.
- Leadership is a game of risk: if you try something new, it might fail. If you stand still and do nothing, you might also fail. The risk of inaction is as great as doing something innovative, either way you own that decision.
- Leaders need to have the courage to make decisions and own the risks.

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