We are getting ready for a new leader. January 20th is fast
approaching. Whom did we elect to be
president of the nation: a leader or a
manager? This writer believes that it is
a useful distinction for voters and, in terms of this blog, for high school
students to make through their civics instruction.
A manager is
someone who takes existing aims and goals and goes about directing an
organization or some sub portion of an organization to achieve those aims and
goals using the most efficient method possible.
This aspect of administrating is concerned mostly with short-term goals
and processes.
It is, for example, trying to make
sure the best person available is placed in the various positions within the
organization. The manager makes
relatively small changes in how things are being carried out. It is the manager whom one looks to for the
day-to-day decisions.
A leader is
not so constrained in his or her perspectives.
A leader does not look at carrying out aims and goals, but more about
what those aims and goals should be.
John Kotter[1]
identifies three basic processes he attributes to leadership: he/she sets the direction for the
organization, he/she organizes the personnel to carry out that direction, and
he/she motivates personnel to strive toward the direction or vision he/she has
set out.
What is more
important: managing or leading? Of course, both are and even if it takes more
than one person to fill these positions, an organization needs to have both an
overall leader and an overall manager.
What did we get for our presidency?
Since the nation elected a non-politician to run things, the citizenry
is ill situated to pass judgement. It
only has reputation to go by without much evidence.
This lack of
knowledge is not new. Barack Obama was a
first term US senator when he ascended to the highest post. It is the opinion of this writer (the reader
might disagree) that this lack of experience was on display during the trying,
early days of his administration – quite a few rookie mistakes (a topic for
another time).
Presently, the new incoming president
does have extensive experience, but it was all in the private sector. To date, he has been reluctant to share
evidence of his business acumen. Yes, there
are a bunch of buildings and resorts with his name on them, but these are
mostly the trappings. The public doesn’t
know how profitable all that is. It is
still waiting for those tax returns.
Without that information, the
citizenry will wait and see how he does.
Is he a leader or a manager or both?
If he is one and not the other, does he have underlings who can fulfill
the missing attribute (although if it’s leadership, that is nearly impossible
for an underling to fulfill)? The public
does know how he campaigned; he promoted his candidacy as being a leader
without equal. His management skills
were communicated more by implication; that is, anyone who has been so
successful in business needs to be a great manager as well. But the question remains: how successful has he been?
Two questions arise with this type of
inquiry. One, is leadership or
management the same in the private and public domains? This writer just read an account of how Jack
Welch transformed GE, a company that had been very successful throughout most
of the twentieth century. His changes
were multiple and profound and he pulled it off. But he had the ultimate say on what
structurally and procedurally would transpire at GE. This is not the case for a president.
A president is not a dictator.[2] He/she is the chief executive, but with
meaningful restraints on his/her power.
There are both checks and balances and separation of powers the reader
learned about in school and hears about daily in the news accounts describing
the political realities at any given time.
The rhetoric during a campaign is carried out as if these attributes
don’t exist – given the promises being made – but they do. And, as such, the ability to be a leader, as
opposed to a manager, is consequently much more difficult.
The second question is: can one say either leadership or management
is more important than the other regardless of the conditions the CEO faces or
is this demand dependent on conditions – sometimes one needs a leader and at
other times one needs a manager? What
one knows for sure is that both are needed to varying degrees all the
time. What one also knows is that
leadership is more “sexy” than management.
In this vein, one can judge that
Hillary Clinton lost the election when she decided to run on more of a
management image than a leadership image.
She decided that her candidacy would communicate the following: as president she was going to further the
Obama legacy and secure it from Republican efforts to dismantle it.
Donald Trump ran on a leadership agenda;
that is, he was going to make profound changes, in terms of direction,
staffing, and spirit, that would regain for the US its lost greatness. This language is what appealed to those
70,000 (over three states) voters who made the difference. This blog has already described this dynamic
in its explanation of why the election turned out as it did. The lesson from this election is: run as a leader, not as a manager.
This distinction will play out over
various issues over the upcoming years.
The first will be over what to do with healthcare. And, on the table, there is not just
Obamacare (which has varying levels of support among the populous), but also
Medicare and Medicaid. These other
programs, products of the Great Society legislation of the 1960s, are widely
popular. To date, Trump has said he does
not want to touch these other programs, but a Republican congress has indicated
it does.
These issues are important and affect
most Americans. Do Americans really want
leadership today; that is, an executive who seeks such an extensive new
direction in our governance? Or does it
want better management of what exists? Upon
reflection, one should be careful about what one wants. This is especially true when one has the
power of the vote.
[1] John Kotter, Leading
Change (Boston, MA: Harvard Business
Press, 1996).
[2] A CEO of a private corporation is not either. He can be fired at any time by a board of
directors assuming they are willing to buy out his contract. On the other hand, a US president cannot be
fired unless he is engaged in illegal activity and is impeached and convicted
by Congress.
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