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Leaders, we're told, are visionaries who get others to share their vision. For businesses nowadays, however, vision isn't enough. Solutions are what count, and these actions had better be implemented quickly and with laser-like focus.
"Are you a leader or a manager?" An internal consultant in a large engineering firm posed this question to a planning group. The members looked puzzled-aren't managers leaders, and vice versa? they wondered.
Not necessarily. In fact, the roles are different enough that companies are beginning to look for leaders throughout all levels of the organization rather than just within the ranks of management. Organizational correctness demands that no one think of himself or herself as a "boss" anymore. Terms such as team leader, facilitator, or coach are more acceptable. This shift is not just a semantic device; it means that supervisors need to be careful not to squash leadership initiatives and new behaviors.
This can be tricky, because leaders tend to be heretical, challenging the way things have always been done and championing ideas that management may view with alarm. They think like fighter pilots, embracing risk and constantly making adjustments.
A successful leader is more of a high-velocity entrepreneur than a classic good manager. It's common wisdom that entrepreneurs seldom make effective managers, yet an organization needs both. Can managers ever be good leaders? Certainly. Their knowledge about their companies' processes, products, and past, as well as their networks of connections, make them good leadership candidates--as well as invaluable resources for other leaders.
If you want to be an effective leader today, what do you actually do to create and implement solutions? Here are some suggestions, based on what I've observed in organizations that are finding leadership within reach at all levels.
Leaders can spearhead change even in the midst of economic downturns, growth, or upheavals. One utility in the Northeast, finding itself in a fundamentally new competitive environment, realized that it needed to reinvent processes that were completely out of sync with the company's direction. In the middle of wringing real value from the Electric T & D systems, a companywide reorganization threw everything, including budget authority, into uncertainty.
The project team leader said, "Let's keep going. What we're doing is moving the company in the right direction." So they did, making in-course realignments, and discovered that disequilibrium actually accelerated the transformation. Time-wasting practices and turf wars were abandoned, and new solutions were generated and implemented in record time.
When organizations have access to the same customers and suppliers, the difference in performance is realized through their leadership. And when leadership for results is systematically and deliberately cultivated, with a focus on outcomes, organizations can move ahead quickly and with confidence, rather than freezing like deer in the headlights.