When we get carried away with the notion of individual leadership, that is generally what we are doing: putting the person before the position, the role before the work. We get it backwards.
Organizations don’t exist – or, generally, aren’t created – in order to provide a canvass for leaders to paint their genius. It is the case, before you object too strenuously about that suggestion, that many proponents of modern concepts of individual leadership make just such an argument. One even insists that organizations should be designed precisely so that they can give instant and effective expression to the “musings” of the leader at the top.
And, it must be said, the corollary of this sort of leadership is just the kind of almost genetically bovine “followership” that is supposed to characterize the rest of us. Indeed, our puzzlingly willful refusal to learn it is even pointed to as the reason why some leaders are stymied in reaching their potential. It’s not them, it’s us.
When you see this cart hove into view, it can seem grand. It appears to animate itself, to be the self-contained master of its fate and ours.
But then you make out the horse struggling along from behind, heroically pushing and straining to keep the cart moving and on track; because the cart, of course, isn’t really leading, just blocking the view. And as you watch what now can clearly be seen to be the awkwardly inefficient but strenuously maintained progress of this mixed-up organization, you realize that for all that both parties sometimes kid themselves that the one is leading and the other following, the horse is making the thing go, and the cart is pretty much just in the way.
Get the priorities right, and organize from there. You may be an important influence, but you are not the motive force. Corporate purpose is. Try to remember that the carrot goes in front, not the cart.
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Today’s tip: Speaking of purpose and people, please take a few moments to read this WSJ column by Peggy Noonan offering some perspective about who we still are.
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