Don't Step in the Leadership

A few years ago you couldn't endure a PowerPoint presentation without the obligatory fuzzy, unreadable Dilbert comic cropping up, either to badly illustrate a point, or to inject some irrelevant humor, sorry humour, into a dull pitch from the unimaginative cretin in front of you. At times, reader, that cretin was me.

Having just about weaned myself off of this lazy habit, I thought I would steal one of Scott Adams' book titles instead for this diatribe, which is all about the leadership of change. Or at least it started out that way. It struck me that if you separate leadership of change from the day to day running of a business, then you're missing what change is all about. In fact if you're not leading change all the time, you're screwed. Why? Let me start with Peter Drucker's pat definition of the difference between a manager and a leader: a Manager "does the thing right" and a Leader "does the right thing". While a number of you may be stroking your beards and nodding sagely at this, let me just deconstruct this a little.

In traditional organisational structures, managers did indeed manage, and bosses did lead (or at least bossed). But this is no longer good enough for the current state of flux that most organisations are in now. It is difficult to do things right, if the thing frequently changes; careering from John Carpenter's The Thing, to the Addams Family's Thing. Even the leader will struggle to do the right thing, when there are no rules or clarity on what to do; we live in a grey spectrum, which has infinite gradations from right to wrong.

Leadership of change is now a full time job, but don't make the mistake of appointing Change Managers or Transformational Leaders as the owners of change. The only true leaders of change are the line managers, who need to deliver real business value to your customers through customer-focussed processes. They need to be mentally equipped to find that slightly whiter shade of pale, within the options that present themselves so fleetingly, and to grasp the opportunity and bring their team along with them, as they exploit the 'thing' for the short time it will be profitable. They will then need to be tough enough to stop doing the 'thing' and find the next chance, when the 'thing' has lost its value.

As Paul Weller snarled: "This is the modern world, we don't need no one to tell us what's right or wrong". Read the rest of the lyrics to this Jam song, as it provides a much better life guide than any number of management books could.

John "Say what you like 'cause I don't care" Moe