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Management Services Spring 2012
Management
or leadership? It doesn’t matter what you call it – it matters what you do!
By John Chamberlin.
on Today, BBC Radio 4, 11 May, 2004. It’s now more than seven years since that question was posed on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, but that answer is still the same today – yes.
“I
The bulk, by far, of companies and organisations in the UK are badly managed, many of them appallingly so. And it appears to be getting worse.
My own recent research (Chamberlin, 2008) showed very clearly the lack of leadership at a range of senior levels in two, large public sector organisations. The sadness, though, is that they have no monopoly on the problem and you don’t need to do research to confi rm it. You just need to keep your eyes and ears open and, mostly, you won’t have to stray any further than your own organisation to come across managers – often senior managers – who appear genetically immune from the last century (almost) of management and leadership research.
At the beginning of his seminal text Out of the Crisis, Deming (1986: xiii) nailed
s there a crisis of leadership in British industry?” Interview
his colours to the mast: “The careful reader may note the use of the word leadership where the usual word would be supervision. The reason is that, for survival, supervision will be replaced by leadership.” And later, at the start of point ‘7’ – of his ‘14 Points of Management’ – he reinforces this with: “The job of
management is not supervision, but leadership,” (ibid: 54). The crucial comment, though, is a little further down on that same page: “Leaders must know the work that they supervise.” (This author’s emphasis).
What’s in a name
I’ve emboldened this because it doesn’t matter what you call it – management, supervision or leadership – it matters what you do! You have to know (or get to know) how the work works (Seddon, 2003) in your own business or organisation and you have to do that from the customer’s perspective. Sid Joynson (1995) called it ‘GeYoHaDi’ – occasionally, you will have to get your hands dirty!
Former Dana Corporation Chairman and CEO Ren McPherson put it quite succinctly: “When you put on the hat of manager for the
fi rst time in your life, you give up honest work for the rest of your life. You no longer drive the forklifts, open the mail or answer the phones or do anything of direct economic value to the enterprise. Given that that’s the case, says Mr McPherson, the only thing you’ve got left is the way you spend your time.” (Cited by Peters, 1985)1
.
And that’s the bit that matters: how and where ‘you spend your time’! For decade after decade, since (at least) the second quarter of the last century, there has been a growing body of evidence for cross-functional, team-based, participative management-led and systems-focused leadership. Yet, it is still almost universally ignored in many public and private sector organisations*. Research has delivered countless books – from the thin paperbacks to the thicker, textbook-type academic tomes – extolling the virtues of managers getting close(r) to the workface, yet there is unlikely to be a single textbook or academic paper saying managers must spend time in their offi ces!
Unfortunately though, modern management styles are still rooted in those century-
Leadership
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