Leading Complexity and Managing Complication

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

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Leadership is about taking people on a journey of change: establishing a vision of the future which binds people together—creating a collective sense of direction—and preventing them from giving up on the goal.

Management is about organising resources and the inherent complication that arises as resources increase: establishing and maintaining processes, procedures, and policies—creating high performing teams—and preventing organisations from descending into chaos.

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This article is part of the Leader-Manager Series.

For regular readers of this column, the notion that leadership and management are not synonyms isn't something new. Yet in the past I have only provided the briefest reasoning for why this is the case. In this piece, and the two that follow in subsequent weeks, I will unpack the key differences between what managers and leaders do; explore the contrasts between aligning people and organising resources; and conclude with some thoughts on the value of a leader-manager and why such individuals are so rare in organisations.

The motivation is that whenever I am consulted on why an employee, team, or initiative is troubled, the cause is usually one of three reasons—in some cases all three are in play:

Lack of necessary resources to achieve the goal.
Lack of quality management to organise the resources that are made available.
Lack of sound leadership to align people and enable change.

Lack of resourcing is a topic I will explore in the future as there is much that can be done—either to do more with less or to encourage greater investment. This leaves how and why the acts of management and leadership can either undermine or facilitate. When both sound management and quality leadership are effectively used, an organisation is well placed to tackle the 10 near term strategic challenges.