When alignment and planning are conjoined, the process releases untapped potential. This is because a leader-manager is energising people by unlocking feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. An approach that ultimately leads to greater wellness.
Klee’s mosaic forms a disciplined architecture from countless small marks. Each element retains its character, yet coherence emerges only through their careful arrangement—a reminder that organisation is less about uniformity than about aligning diverse contributions toward a shared structure.
Organisation is a management process that enables the creation of people systems to carry out plans set by a Line Manager.
Alignment is a leadership process that revolves around communication and motivation. It occurs once people have been organised into their various roles and tasks assigned.
In this column I continue my train of thought from Strategic Direction Versus Initiative Planning. In that article I explored the notion that planning is a deductive process used by managers to achieve orderly outcomes while strategy tends to be inductive in nature and revolves around looking for relationships and patterns. My conclusion was that planning and strategy have the same relationship as management and leadership. One is not a substitute for the other and each is most effective when complementing the other. Competent planning is a vital reality check on exuberant strategy, and sound strategy gives planning the direction to bring about change.
This week I continue to look at the toolbox of a leader-manager, focussing on the people aspects. Specifically, the difference between aligning people with a strategy and organising people to carry out a plan.
Organisations that are above average in their track record of developing leader-managers put an emphasis on creating challenging opportunities, not just for aspiring talent but for incumbent Line Managers who can too easily become stale.
By leveraging the management tool of control to harness the energy released by the leadership tool of motivation, the informal leadership networks that arise can handle the greater demands that result from the organisational change process.
When Line Managers lack the hard skills of process design and implementation, the capacity to initiate changes in procedure, or the ability to write sound policy, and instead try to *lead* their team to success by hiring or co-opting other managers in the business to solve their problems, an engine
