Akkam's RazorMedia Omnivore.

I saw this retweeted quote (via Twitter from Frank Roche) attributed to the recently deceased Russell Ackoff:

“It is better to use imprecise measures of what is wanted, rather than precise measures of what is not.”

On an intersecting tangent, I saw the below at John Baldoni’s Leadership at Work the Harvard Business Blog regarding a recent McKinsey study:

That’s a conclusion that I draw from a recent global survey by McKinsey and Company about what it takes to manage corporate performance. Only 48% of managers surveyed believed that they need to inspire and only 46% believed it was their responsibility to provide direction during this crisis. The numbers for inspiration and direction actually drop to 45% and 39% respectively when considered as behaviors for how to manage post-crisis.

More troubling, only 30% of managers felt that they needed to motivate their employees during the crisis and just 23% did post-crisis. The need for accountability ranked low too, just 23% for crisis and only 18% post-crisis. Innovation also ranked low, just 33% believed it was necessary now, but some 46% did believe it was necessary post-crisis.

My personal mantra has always been that managing and leading are two separate things that are not mutually exclusive.

Narrowly defined, managing is about policies, procedures, and the allocation of scarce resources.   Management is about fear – eliminating risk from negative deviance – what you want to avoid.   You won’t get more, you’ll just lose less, trying to shrink the pie as little as possible.   Leadership is about opportunity by winning hearts and minds and motivating your team.  By focusing on what you want – emphasizing positive deviance, you can go for more and better, and seek out opportunities, making the pie bigger.

Tags: Frank Roche, Harvard Business Publishing, John Baldoni, McKinsey & Company, Russell Ackoff, Twitter Inc

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 10:30 am and is filed under Business, Culture, Organizational Dynamics, Psychology. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.