In yesterday’s post we noted that managers tend to focus on making the status quo more efficient. In other words, whatever changes they make typically are more tactical in nature. These types of folks tend to act as custodians. The expectations of a ‘caretaker executive’, for example, is to keep things running, minimize risk, and basically not screw things up.
This doesn’t suggest that these types of individuals don’t demonstrate leadership—because they do. For instance, a manager who defends a company value (rarely a fun experience) is performing an especially important aspect of their responsibilities. However, an isolated act of leadership doesn’t make one ‘Lincoln-esque’. Regardless of whatever lofty title the ‘caretaker executive’ was given, their basic role is managerial in nature.
Likewise, even the most transformative leader typically has traditional ‘management’ responsibilities. For example, bringing in the operating budget five percent below target is a short term imperative for the director who is accustomed to shaking things up. Yet even though leaders have responsibility for comparatively pedestrian tasks such as managing budgets, their larger contribution is changing the unproductive aspects of the status quo. That means forging new policies, breeding expectations for better processes, revitalizing the culture—all in the name of improving results.
In other words, leaders manage, and managers lead. What makes them one or the other is determined by the per ponderous of what they do—not by an envious title or by the power they hold. How they impact the status quo becomes the acid test in determining whether they’re a manager or a leader.
There is nothing so obvious as the manager (labeled as such through their decreed title) who leads effectively by thoughtfully and stridently advancing an agenda that keeps the organization ahead of the curve in a time of dynamic change. Likewise, there’s nothing more maddening than the leader (that adjective being implicit with a lofty title) who fiddles (i.e. manages) while Rome burns.
If there’s ever any confusion as to who the leaders are and who the managers are —just watch how they treat the status quo.