How to Navigate Collisions Between Leaders and Managers
Leaders change things. Managers stabilize things.
Stagnant organizations need leadership. Chaotic organizations need management.
Tension:
Tension between change agents and stabilizers is inevitable, dynamic, potentially dangerous, and often useful.
Ask people who love stability to go to the left side of the room. Ask people who love change to go to the right. Know there are tensions between these two groups.
Tensions in organizational life often emerge in the gap between change agents and stabilizers.
#1. Stabilizers apart from change agents are dangerous.
Stabilizers create predictability and efficiencies. In a changing world you can become efficient and irrelevant if you are consistent at things that don’t matter.
The ultimate goal of stable organizations eventually becomes self-preservation.
#2. Change agents apart from stabilizers are dangerous.
Change agents destabilize processes and procedures in search of innovation and growth. They transform organizations into fast moving machines filled with inefficiencies.
Eventually the goal of chaotic organizations becomes self-preservation.
Constant change or persistent sameness increases stress, lowers confidence, and decreases productivity.
Collision:
The benefit of colliding perspectives is diversity and maturity.
Dynamic organizations deliver value to their constituents, customers, and communities when they successfully navigate collisions between change agents and stabilizers.
How much:
- You need stable foundations to innovate.
- Organizations tend to stagnate apart from intervention.
- Innovation and change are best embraced and expressed by organizations that work on change AND processes.
- Change produces vitality. Constant change, however, discourages people and creates chaos.
- Forward moving organizations always lean into change.
True stability:
Shared values are the foundation of stability.
When organizations feel stagnant or chaotic, go to values first, then vision and processes.
Do small doses of change yield big results or is it necessary to ‘shake things up’?
Can you balance stability and change or do 50/50 organizations stagnate?
Great piece! I like the idea of actually implementing your idea of asking people to move to one side of the room or the other, and then talking about what the means to everyone in the room…
Thanks Gerry. It might be useful to discuss the gap. 🙂
Good morning Dan. WOW! Today’s blog really speaks to me and is timely. Your #4 about constant change discouraging people and creating chaos is so true. Our company has been living that lately and I have seen the discouragement and chaos up close and personal. I will certainly bring this blog into my next “coffee round table” conversation with management. Thanks and have a great weekend!
Thanks Robert. In turbulent times finding some points of stability seems to matter more. I’ve found that using values as a foundation is a good starting place.
Dear Dan,
An interesting post!
The roles of Leaders and Managers are quite different and you have spelled out very correctly. Visionary leaders turn the stable organizations into the fast growth organizations with future vision supported by innovation and break-through technology/products. Identifying right good people for managing the changing scenario is the added task of these leaders. The responsibility of delivering results lies with managers who need to plan, organize and control new systems & procedures with people management.
It’s said, “All Managers can be Good Leaders but All Leaders can’t be Good Managers”. The role of leaders is to visualise the bright future, provide good investment and show the path of progress with the needed guidance & control. It’s the managers who deliver!
I think it is the team that delivers. Diverse teams move vision forward.
Thanks Dr. Asher. YOur sentence “All Managers can be Good Leaders but All Leaders can’t be Good Managers” My experience validates this idea.
I hadn’t heard that before. I predict that the better you are at one the worse you are at the other. The exception is a few unusual people seem to navigate both worlds well.
A very timely post. There are tensions at my organization related to an unwillingness to shake things up, to take action, and an inflexibility due to slavish adherence to inefficient processes intended to CYA. So to answer your question – Do small doses of change yield big results or is it necessary to ‘shake things up’? There is a need to follow both paths; one does not exclude the other. How does one choose incremental change vs.big bang change? Answer: Understand the stakeholders, the impacts, etc. DO YOUR ANALYSIS! And be sure to have support in place. Then decide which approach to take. Projects are not one-size-fits-all. The balance between stability and change is like a seesaw. There should be no fixed percentage of each. It is dynamic and depends on the needs of your organization in that moment.
Thanks Dr. P. Much appreciated.
Nothing like CYA to stifle an organization. I wonder if small change is the day to day formula for success and ‘shaking things up’ is the occasional approach?
Great Article Dan..Superbly mention all things.looking for more blog like this on Leadership
Thanks Alpesh!
Dan, thought provoking, as usual.
Thoughts: at the individual level, don’t we need anagers who can lead and leaders who can manage? Why put team members on different sides of the room? Don’t we need Innovation at all levels and roles?
Individuals, most of us, as well as organizations and teams, can lead to be ambidextrous. That can be the foundation for continuous change.
Don Goeltz