Here, bennis uses an important difference proposed by John Cote: leadership and management (narrow sense). In his view, management refers to the exercise of formal functions, and leaders rely on followers to make people recognize and respect them, thus willingly attaching themselves to a common goal.
From this theoretical perspective, there are many differences between management and leadership. The management focuses on the present and hopes to make the existing management system more perfect and conform to the norms; Leaders focus on the future, emphasize change and challenge the status quo. Management depends on the authority given by formal organizations, and leadership depends on the authority recognized by followers; Management emphasizes the responsibility to the organization and hopes to realize the responsibility of the organization; The leader is responsible for his followers and hopes to sublimate them; Management emphasizes the establishment of formal systems and procedures in the organization, while leaders emphasize the establishment of a culture with the same values in the organization.
The so-called benevolent people have different opinions, and the wise people have different opinions. Kurt's point of view also has critics. For example, some critics believe that this reduces leadership. Henry mintzberg thinks that leadership and management should be distinguished. He believes that leaders who lack management are chaotic leaders; Management without leadership is boring and unimaginative. So when I translated mintzberg's book Managers Are Not MBA, he confused the two words.
From China's point of view, narrow management emphasizes "things" more or less, and narrow leadership emphasizes "people"; Management responds to complexity, and leadership brings change. No matter how complicated the situation is, management (through system, process and authority) simplifies it, so that it can get quite consistent results every time and make the system work well like a machine. When there is no existing experience to copy and no existing authority to follow, people with confidence and ideas are needed to open up new paths, which is the time to reflect the value of leaders. Today, China society is such a situation. As Mr. Liu Chuanzhi pointed out, being an entrepreneur in China needs a skill, that is, you can't cook according to other people's existing recipes, but you must exercise your ability to write recipes. This is related to Kurt's concept of leadership.
What needs to be pointed out is that, for China at present, mintzberg's point of view has some truth. The reason is that bennis's "excessive management and insufficient leadership" does not exist in China. The current situation in China is that leadership training is excessive and management training is insufficient. In the words of Mr. Zhang Ruimin, the implementation of system, process and authority in China is still in the stage of "supplementary management course", and it is far from over in China. Let's take a look at the history of world industrial development. The west is a clear "industrialization-post-industrialization" development path, but China has no time to fully adapt to industrialization and directly enter the post-industrialization stage. Therefore, enterprises in China must make up management courses.
A group of trainers clamoring in the market, many of their views are too casual, and some of them are covered with the cloak of "leadership", but it is easy to render the bad tradition of being casual, informal or even too rule by men in the enterprise. Human factors are always important, but attaching importance to human factors is by no means equal to the rule of man. Some trainers in Taiwan Province Province, China over-interpret China's leadership at this stage with the skills of ancient China emperors, which deserves our vigilance.
For the present situation of China, good management is still the top priority. At the same time, senior leaders should also play the necessary leadership role. "Grasp with both hands, both hands should be hard". Because of my teaching work, I have come into contact with many dynamic enterprises in China. What did they miss? On the one hand, what is lacking is a more scientific system, a clearer process and a clearer authority. For example, it is necessary to cultivate people's "herbal tea" and cultivate people's minimum respect and compliance with the system, process and authority. But on the other hand, they are also worried about how to deal with everything, and at the same time, they can create many people who are "willing to worry and worry" like themselves-this is the words of Mr. Tong Xian, the machinery manager of Zhenhua Port. At the same time, besides having rules to follow and a broad outline, an organization also hopes to form a very cohesive and sometimes even religious common values.
Therefore, we need to balance management and leadership, both of which are very important.