Leadership promotes new directions; management executes existing directions.

The function of management

Management can do much more than merely keep things ticking over. It manages complex projects ranging from making a major movie to putting the first man on the moon. Managers can use facilitative skills to foster innovation. By sticking to a purely functional definition, we leave completely open the question of style. This liberating move means that managers can be inspiring. They can empower, nurture and develop talent. An inspiring leader influences us to change direction while an inspiring manager motivates us to work harder. Managers needn't be restricted to mechanical control, transactional rewards, bureaucratic methods or relating without empathy. Portraying managers in such negative terms was an accident of history that we now must put behind us.

To get the best out of knowledge workers, managers might set up self-managing teams. Here, the classic functions of management (planning, organizing and controlling) are delegated. But the function of management is still operating even though the manager is not personally doing it. This should dispel the myth of the manager as a control freak or bureaucrat.

By removing all style connotations, leadership benefits as much as management. No longer needing to be inspiring cheerleaders, leaders find it possible to exhibit quiet, factual leadership. This is essential in technical contexts, where a hard business case often moves stakeholders more than an inspirational delivery. Not being committed by definition to any particular style, both leaders and managers are free to use any style that works for the context in which they want to make a difference.

The function of leadership

Leadership needs to narrow its focus to promoting new directions as one-off acts to promote a better way...

...Key features of leadership reinvented

• It consists in showing a better way, either by explicit advocacy or by example.
• Those who are led may not report to the person showing leadership, even informally.
• No implementation is entailed. This is management's domain, getting work done through others, motivating people, developing them (more on management below.)
• It does not involve managing the people led or getting things done through them.
• It comes to an end once the target audience buys the need to change. It sells the tickets for the journey; management drives the bus to the destination.
• It relies on influence; since it’s not an actual role, it can't decide for the group.
• It can promote ideas developed by others; no need to be creative personally.

This is a very interesting assessment of the role of "leadership" and "management" abilities in an organization, why both are important, and why, in particular, it is time to re-elevate the view of management as an essential skill set for getting things done. Perhaps the best line in the paper is an analogy:

(Leaders) sell the tickets for the journey; management drives the bus to the destination.

This line emphasizes that both processes are necessary to achieve success. It is time to reduce the stigma associated with "management" - the belief that it is rooted in bureaucracy, a lack of creativity, and a defense of the status quo. Effective managers develop organizations, motivate teams, plan for contingencies, and, in many cases, provide warning when a goal is unachievable. Better management (specifically of risk) at big banks would have mitigated the depth of the recent financial crisis. Make sure that your organization is recognizing and rewarding managerial skills as opposed to becoming overly enamored of "one-off" leaders, lest you find yourself full of great ideas that remain unrealized.