Leadership and management are often seen as two sides of the same coin. They are different but complementary and almost always needed simultaneously. This debate has been ongoing for at least the later half of the last century when Abraham Zalenznik published Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?, which sent the scientific management community into an uproar challenging some of their basic premises about productivity being king. John Kotter, author and Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership (emeritus) of Harvard Business School, put it this way, “Management is about coping with complexity. Leadership is about coping with change.”
In today's rapidly evolving social, economic, technological, and business landscapes, organizations of every type are constantly faced with both change and complexity. A simple example of this is the change created by the forced remote workforce during the pandemic resulted in much greater complexity with regard to communication and coordination among and between teams. This situation requires both leadership and management. This is very common. We often need both leadership and management when facing situations but knowing how each has its own function and characteristic activities will help enlighten us how to apply them appropriately and how to look for or develop them in others. Let’s dive into each of these concepts.
Leadership
There is no lack of great quotes about leadership. Two of my favorites are:
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. - Dwight D. Eisenhower
A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. - Lao Tzu
Both of these quotes focus on getting people to want to make the change that the leader believes is necessary. Sometimes that change is accomplishing a task and other times it is changing a direction. Either way, getting the person to desire to make that happen is leadership. Some key aspects of the role of leadership in change include the following:
Vision and strategy: One of the primary responsibilities of a leader is to set a clear vision for the organization's future in response to change. This involves identifying emerging trends, assessing the potential impact on the business, and developing a strategic plan to capitalize on new opportunities and mitigate risks. A strong vision and strategy not only provide direction for the organization but also inspire and motivate employees to work towards common goals.
Communication and engagement: When dealing with change, leaders must ensure that they effectively communicate the rationale, objectives, and expected outcomes of the change initiatives. By clearly articulating the reasons for the change and the benefits it will bring, leaders can gain the trust and buy-in of their team members. They should also encourage open dialogue, address concerns, and create a culture of transparency to foster employee engagement throughout the change process.
Empowerment and support: Leaders play a vital role in empowering employees to navigate change by providing the necessary resources, training, and support. This may involve helping team members develop new skills, creating opportunities for collaboration and learning, or offering emotional support during challenging times. By empowering employees, leaders can cultivate a sense of ownership and commitment to the change initiatives.
Adaptability and resilience: Effective leaders demonstrate adaptability and resilience in the face of change, serving as role models for their team members. They are open to new ideas, willing to take calculated risks, and able to learn from setbacks. By exhibiting these qualities, leaders can create a culture of adaptability and resilience that encourages employees to embrace change and find innovative solutions to problems.
Monitoring and evaluation: As change initiatives are implemented, leaders must continually monitor progress and evaluate the results against predefined objectives. By tracking performance and gathering feedback, leaders can identify areas for improvement, make data-driven decisions, and adjust their approach as needed to ensure the success of the change initiatives.
Management
Before we discuss the management of complexity in an organization, let’s first discuss complexity. According to Tesler’s law of the conservation of complexity, complexity can neither be created nor destroyed. The idea is that every software application at a certain point in time has a certain amount of complexity that must be dealt with, either by the software engineer in the development process or by the user through their interactions with the application. This is interesting from a software development perspective but I think this extends to organizations as well. I posit that complexity in an organization, at a point in time, can also neither be created nor destroyed but rather it must be managed. As an application grows it becomes more complex. The same for organizations. More employees, more customers, more suppliers all result in increased complexity that cannot be destroyed but must be managed.
While there are dictionary definitions of complexity, the scholarly formulation of complexity is not completely agreed upon. Herbert Simon in his 1962 article, The Architecture of Complexity, discusses complexity as having properties that include: distinct components, that in turn have their own components thus a hierarchical and repeating structure (think Mandelbrot), these components interact with each other that results in phenomena that cannot be trivially redacted to the properties of the components (thus the sum is greater than the parts). Using this definition we can see that organizations meet these criteria. Organizations are very much a hierarchical and repeating structure.
A brief sidebar on complex vs complicated. These two terms are often used interchangeably but are different. Complicated problems are hard to solve, but they typically have rules or algorithms to solve them. Complex problems have too many unknowns and interrelated components to reduce to a set of rules. Fixing a car is complicated, disrupting the automotive industry is complex.
If we can borrow this notion that complexity can neither be created nor destroyed from software, we should also be able to borrow management techniques. In András Tilcsik and Chris Clearfield’s book Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It, the authors outline a number of strategies to manage complexity including designing loosely coupled systems. Loosely coupled systems help prevent cascading failures. It is not uncommon in system failures for the symptoms to not be proximate to the cause. For example, when databases get busy with long running queries, often the way this manifests itself is with errors on web servers. This shows that tightly coupled systems cause cascading failures and are hard to diagnose.
Organizations are similar. Teams that are heavily dependent on one another can have cascading failures. For example, if an infrastructure team doesn’t complete one of their projects on time, and a product team is counting on that infrastructure to support their feature development, we see cascading delays. While loosely coupled teams have benefits, just like our systems, there are tradeoffs. Without these dependencies we don’t get economies of scale. If every product team had to build their own infrastructure, they’d likely not get many product features completed. The balance between tightly and loosely coupled is difficult to perfect and changes over time. The design of organizations, the facilitation of coordination, and the enablement of communication, are management tasks.
Clayton Christensen, an American academic and business consultant who developed the theory of "disruptive innovation" and authored the 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma, wrote, “Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team.” Managing the complexity of an organization for employees is a noble profession because it is difficult and at times exhausting but incredibly important and rewarding.
The Great Debate
Which is more important to an organization, management or leadership? A 2017 survey of over 1,000 CEOs used how they spent their time to rate them as either more focused on management or more on leadership. Management tasks included interactions with employees, meetings with suppliers or clients, and a focus on metrics. Leadership tasks included interactions with other C-suite executives, personal communications, and planning sessions. The authors then analyzed the financial performance of the respective companies and determined that organizations were more productive and profitable where the CEO tended towards leadership more so than management. The impact on productivity could be as much as 20% that of capital investments. However, before concluding that leadership is more important than management, the authors then analyzed the size and industry of the companies, concluding that CEOs focused more on leadership tended to be more prevalent in larger firms and in industries that were more skill-intensive. Thus, the performance difference is likely caused by company-CEO mismatch rather than management vs. leadership.
The simple answer is that organizations need them both. Perhaps at different times organizations need more leadership and at others they need more management but no organization, team, or department can succeed for long without both. Sometimes these skills come from different people. You might have a very strong leader who has to rely on a strong #2 for management. Sometimes strong leaders hire great managers to their teams to complement their skills. If you, like most of us, have particular strengths in one or the other, being aware of this and surrounding yourself with others who have complementary skills is a great strategy. This ensures the team gets what it needs to be successful no matter if they are dealing with change or complexity or likely both simultaneously.