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| Management Tools |
| On Leadership Versus Management |
There are important contrasts between leaders and managers, and although your job description may call you a "manager," there may be times when fulfilling your responsibilities will require "leadership" instead of "management."
Captain Grace Hopper put it well: “No one ever managed men into battle.” Dr. Hugh Nibley agrees: "The leader has a passion for equality.... For the manager, on the other hand, the idea of equality is repugnant and indeed counterproductive. Where promotion, perks, privilege and power are the name of the game, awe and reverence for rank is everything, the inspiration and motivation of all good men."
Nibley completely disdains manager-types. "Managers," he writes, "do not promote individuals whose competence might threaten their own position; and so as the power of management spreads ever wider, the quality deteriorates, if that is possible. In short, while management shuns equality, it feeds on mediocrity."
What does this mean for you? Don’t black out the word manager on your desk plaque just yet. You may be the only one who realizes there is a difference. Take advantage of opportunities to become a “leader.” Our management training courses will help you learn to make decisions based less upon personal ambitions and more upon company-wide improvements. We teach inventiveness, innovation and ingenuity.
We'll sweat the little details for you--the payroll laws, the government regulations, the retirement plans. That should leave you ample time to prepare for the battle. And remember what Captain Hopper said: "A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships were built for."
"Leaders are movers and shakers, original, inventive, unpredictable, imaginative, full of surprises that discomfit the enemy in war and the main office in peace." -Hugh Nibley
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