Leadership

What is leadership? Jim Collins, author of one of my favorite books, Good to Great, has a great article on this very topic. According to Collins, it is really a battle between managing and leading.

Collins believes leading is done by vision and mission while managing is done in reaction to situations. I used to think Collins had disdain for the entire idea of management; he does not. As a matter of fact, Collins believes leaders must manage at times too. He writes, "Those who seek to lead but fail to manage will become either irrelevant or dangerous, not only to their organizations, but to society." Peter Drucker once wrote that the very best leaders are, first, managers. What do they mean?

What Drucker was talking about was not leaving out the questions. When we lead we tend to drive forward with little time for questions. Drucker and Collins remind us that questions are important in leadership, and if questions are important, than so too are answers because every question has an answer.

Drucker's ideas all centered on this idea of results, and in order to get results one had to first ask the right questions. Collins believes this drive for answers and results was not just a drive for "a means to an end" but much more. Collins writes of Drucker, "And as much as he wrote about institutions and society, I believe that he cared most deeply about the individual." This is the key to leadership. Management, as an idea, tends to leave this passion for the individual out.

As we examine leadership and management in the field of education, we do so from what I thought was a different perspective - changing the world. What I found inside the words of Jim Collins and the thoughts of Peter Drucker were similar thoughts, ones that surprised me. I do not know why I was surprised, as men of stature, like Collins and Drucker, are leaders because of their passion to change the world in which they live. When confronted with leaders like these my question is always the same: why have they impacted the world while others have not? Collins has an answer for that very question; he writes that "There are two ways to change the world: the pen (the use of ideas) and the sword (the use of power). Drucker chose the pen, and thereby rewired the brains of thousands who carry the sword. Those who choose the pen have an advantage over those who wield the sword: the written word never dies."

And, that is another example of leadership. Leadership is rooted in these concepts of vision, mission and ideas. It is the idea that is molded and shaped into a vision and given feet as a mission that moves an organization forward to change its market and shape the landscape of the world. That is leadership, and it is very different than management.