Sweater 

Pant 

Pumps

—

The significance of a good morning by Amy Kennedy

12/06/17

This is an age-old discussion – what the role is of a manager vs. a leader. 

Warren Bennis has likely done more to popularize this distinction than anyone else. He wrote in Learning to Lead: A Workbook on Becoming a Leader that “There is a profound difference between management and leadership, and both are important. To manage means to bring about, to accomplish, to have charge of or responsibility for, to conduct. Leading is influencing, guiding in a direction, course, action, opinion. The distinction is crucial.” And in one of his most famous lines, he added, “Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing.”

Unfortunately, some leaders now see their job as just coming up with big and vague ideas, and they treat implementing them, or even engaging in conversation and planning about the details of them, as mere “management” work. And worse still, this distinction seems to be used as a reason for leaders to avoid the hard work of learning about the people that they lead and the customers they serve. “Big picture only” leaders often make decisions without considering the constraints that affect the cost and time required to implement them, and even when evidence begins mounting that it is impossible or unwise to implement their grand ideas, they often choose to push forward anyway.

There has to be balance between the two. The best leaders do something that is really a mix of leadership and management. At a minimum, they lead in a way that constantly takes into account the importance of management. To do the right thing, a leader needs to understand what it takes to do things right, and to make sure they actually get done. 

When we boil down the whole leadership versus management debate – there are a few things that need to be considered:

Every company needs someone focused on doing both. There must be someone serving the role of CEO (big picture thinker) and someone filling the role of the Manager (get it executed)

These are not mutually exclusive nor do they have to be at odds with each other

It is difficult for one person to effectively do both roles consistently

Much of the success that can happen when done right centers around effective communication between the roles and with the entire team

Execution is still the only thing that truly matters – big pictures that are not executed are just hallucination!

Zig Ziglar said “It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through.” Creating a business plan is the foundation, but we must remember to share the business plan with the other people involved in the business. Carrying out a successful plan requires personal commitments from those in leadership as well as those who will do the day to day activity needed for the plan to succeed. We call this personal commitment plan a leadership plan.

Far too often, owners and managers create job descriptions and commitments for their staff or team, but seldom have anything written regarding their involvement in achieving the success of the company business plan. Too often, when the owner or manager leaves the business, the business will fail. If the leadership in a company is not disciplined and dedicated to following the business plan, the plan will often fall by the wayside and become little more than a piece of paper with some words on it. 

Thus, the Leadership Plan is the document that says “I am going to do these things to assure we reach our goals.” This plan should clearly define the owner’s priorities for how time is used on the job, and should provide the team with clarity in how each role should be performed. Of course, successfully using this plan means you have to be willing to be evaluated about how well it has been executed. That level of accountability to the team sets a standard and creates an environment that leads to growth and success of the employees and the company as a whole.

HTG uses a simple worksheet to capture leadership commitments. These consist of three areas around each topic:

Commitments – Specific areas of focus that aligns job performance goals and objectives with the company business plan and goals. Answers the question “What areas of my job align directly with the company business plan and goals?”

Execution Plan – How you will achieve your commitments? This should include key milestones, priorities, and dependencies for success. Answers the question “What will you specifically do?”

Accountabilities – Define how you will measure success and what metrics you will use to evaluate the realization of your commitments. These will be KPI’s and metrics related to measuring success. They answer the question “How will you know you have achieved success?”

You can select a number of areas that align directly with the company business plan, but here are a few that may be good to consider:

Revenue/Financial/Profitability Objectives

Personal Growth and Training Objectives

Customer Relationships and Satisfaction/Loyalty Objectives

Company Culture/Fellow Employee/Process Improvement Objectives

Business and Career Objectives

This week I want to talk about the difference between a performance culture and a growth culture, and which is the better alternative. Entrepreneurs are all about results, they’re very bottom-line, results, and outcomes driven. They tend to value hard work and outcomes, sometimes at the expense of the soft side of their organization. So I want to distinguish between two kinds of cultures - A performance culture, which is pretty typical in small businesses and entrepreneurial firms, versus a growth culture, which tends to be a bit better. 

In a performance culture, the values are knowledge, expertise, intellect, experience, providing challenges, being driven, and identifying winners and losers. This is a great manager, and this is a poor manager, and so the great manager gets more of my time and attention, et cetera. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

A growth culture, by distinction, also has those qualities. We’re not saying those aren’t desirable qualities to have in your organization, but what a growth culture adds is safety, continuous learning, feedback loops, and how people feel. That may sound a little funny to some of you, but it is important in terms of deciding what kind of culture you want to have, identifying how that culture works for your people, and gauging how they feel about it.

Going back to safety, I don’t mean physical safety. The parking lot doesn’t have broken glass all over the ground, your employees are not going to be assaulted on the way to the front door, and they’re safe from the elements, and have comfortable working spaces, and all - that’s not the kind of safety I mean. What I’m talking about is psychological safety where you’re not going to have negative repercussions for making a small mistake. Psychological safety simply means that the culture allows for risk taking, and making a few mistakes without being brutalized. It doesn’t mean that people aren’t held accountable, it just means that the culture is understanding of mistakes. We don’t reward them, but we don’t have terrible punishments for them either. People are safe to stretch a little bit, and get out of their comfort zones, and make a few decisions that otherwise they may not make.

In either organization there’s a delicate balance between challenging your people, and nurturing your people. If you challenge them too much too often you’re going to break them down, you’re going to burn them out. On the other hand, if you don’t challenge them enough, people will stay in their comfort zones, and won’t grow and learn and add value to the organization over time. That’s not so bad, we all need cogs in the machine, but at the same time we want to make sure that we have enough challenge for our people.

Small business leaders are some of the most intense people you’re ever going to meet. They are driven, and focused, and so results oriented. But why can’t I be a happy achiever and let that happiness flow throughout the culture? Why can’t we have fun at the same time that we’re setting new sales records, and new customer satisfaction records, and all these other things?

Do consumers spend more when thinking about the past?

Nostalgia works!

Yes, the truth is out of the bag. Nostalgia leads to a higher likelihood of spending more money.

A new study has revealed that nostalgic weakens a person’s desire for money, leading them to be more open to expenditure than saving.

Implication:

Brands seeking to elicit feelings of nostalgia in their promotions and product lines as well as charitable and political organisations…

“The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.” Pearl S. Buck

Creative destruction is the breaking down of old habits and practices that, in turn, create new and more powerful means of expression. The walls come down, innovation is magnified and old habits die. New avenues of expression and invention appear. In all this, opportunity and creativity are expanding exponentially. The advertising industry is experiencing creative destruction.” John Hegarty