What's more, we still don't understand the difference between management and leadership. I received an email from a business school professor asking me to explain the difference. I was surprised, but I suppose I should not have been.
Very simply, management is about how well a hole is dug and leadership is about deciding whether we need a hole in the first place and if we do, inspiring the people who are going to dig the hole to do it with enthusiasm. I still like Vance Packard's definition:
Leadership is the art of getting others to want to do something that you feel should be done.
The operative word in the definition is "want." A leader is someone who inspires followers to pursue goals with enthusiasm and determination. Managers generally don't do that; in fact, one of the problems we have is that many managers actually have the opposite effect on the people who report to them.
As for business organizations, repeated Gallup surveys tell us the price we are paying for this lack of leadership. Only 33 percent of workers are engaged in their jobs. The other 67 percent are just doing enough to get by and get a paycheck. I submit to you that the major reason for this lack of engagement is caused by a lack of leadership.
Alan Mulally was tapped by Ford in September 2006 to save them from bankruptcy. They lost 16 billion dollars that year--that is 46 million dollars a day, every day of the year! He promised to do that in three years without taking any bailout money from the government.
He delivered on his promise and stayed on until 2014, when he retired. Three years later his successor was fired. Ford was once more slipping back toward the abyss. The difference? Leadership. Mulally is a true leader, one of the best I've known in my 50 year business career. And in subsequent posts, I will talk about how leadership is an imperative--we must start turning out leaders who have character and integrity or the United States is going to drop significantly in its role as a positive model for others to emulate.