Sometimes One Is Greater Than Three
The business world is full of managers. From team leads and project managers on up to the C-suite, businesses have managers at every level. Some are very good at it. Many get by. Too many can’t keep their heads above water.
To a lesser degree, the business world also has leaders--far fewer than managers, but they're there.
Harder to find still are those who excel at both managing and leading.
When I make the distinction between managers and leaders, I’m referring to the differences that Abraham Zaleznik defined between the two in The Harvard Business Review in 1977. HBR summarizes his distinction this way:
“The difference between managers and leaders, he wrote, lies in the conceptions they hold, deep in their psyches, of chaos and order. Managers embrace process, seek stability and control, and instinctively try to resolve problems quickly—sometimes before they fully understand a problem’s significance. Leaders, in contrast, tolerate chaos and lack of structure and are willing to delay closure in order to understand the issues more fully. In this way, Zaleznik argued, business leaders have much more in common with artists, scientists, and other creative thinkers than they do with managers.”
In short, in problem solving managers seek to limit choice while leaders seek to find and explore possibilities.
No where does this show up more clearly than in the managerial usage of the three Ps: Policies, Processes, and Procedures. Most employee handbooks overflow with all three.
The Three Ps
Let’s begin the discussion of the 3Ps with their definitions:
Policy - General guidelines for a course or principle of action adopted or proposed by an organization
Process - Specific steps or tasks that must be performed, usually in order and usually according to a defined policy
Procedure - Step by step instructions for tasks within a process, usually defined by a process derived from a policy
Another simpler way to define them is that 3Ps = Rules. These rules are the backbone of management’s pursuit of control and stability. The standard theory is that by having as many issues as possible controlled through documented policies, processes, and procedures variability is eliminated or substantially reduced. The resultant stability should create more favorable operational business conditions.
Logically, that theory makes a lot of sense, so much so, in fact, that it’s been the standard operating procedure for businesses dating back to the start of the industrial age. The problem is, however, that we currently live in the information age, where ideas, bits, and bytes are the currency of the realm instead of tangible goods.
That means that primary business interactions aren’t between workers and machines but between people. And while the 3Ps may be useful in managing things like harassment, workplace accidents, and operational instructions, they fail with things like PTO, promotions, and pay.
The problem isn’t that the 3Ps are inherently bad, because they’re not. Every business requires some amount of rulemaking to thrive. It’s that they require a level of prediction that simply isn’t possible for management teams with limited capacity and foresight. Unfortunately, they also limit the thinking and imagination of employees when all scenarios are prescribed by a policy, process, or procedure.
Fortunately, there’s another P that unlocks leadership and creativity despite the complexity of modern organizations, and that’s permission.
Leadership Is About Permission
As Zalesnik described, leaders give up the control so sought after by managers in order to gain wider and more creative understanding of issues. And in giving up the control of the 3Ps, leaders automatically give their organizations permission.
They give:
Permission to use unconventional thinking to solve problems and ideate
Permission to make decisions when and where they are needed
Permission to self organize
And in the best of scenarios, permission to fail in pursuit of excellence
In other words, they give their employees permission to act like adults, not subjects.
When leaders say “Tell me more” instead of quoting a policy or procedure convening a weeks- or months-long management review, they are giving their employees permission to be part of the solution and not automatons looking at manuals or managers for what to do next.
When leaders themselves use curiosity, empathy, courage, and integrity as guiding values, they destroy the construct of “Do as I say, not as I do.” Through that modeling, they give permission for others to do the same.
Potential Results of Permission-Based Leadership
What would it look like for your organization to examine all of its 3Ps and remove as many as possible in pursuit of permission? How much and what types of energy could be shifted from bureaucracy to creativity?
What could your PTO policy look like if you pursued permission to take as much time off as needed instead of accrual?
What could issue escalation processes turn into if you pursued permission to make decisions when and where they are needed instead of running everything up the chain of command?
What could integration testing procedures uncover if you pursued permission to perform Test Driven Development instead of the ineffective and inefficient code now test later paradigm?
Today’s working world is one of complex adaptive systems that often deliver unexpected results and often require novel solutions. The days of a select few doing all of the thinking for whole organizations are long gone.
To conclude, management is about ensuring that one plus one equals two. Leadership is about ensuring that the total exceeds the sum of its parts. Sometimes one is greater than three.
My next post will talk about another key difference between management and leadership, vision.
