The Lack of Leadership Leads to Management

When confronted with the alternative of being more self-organising, decision-making and accountable people tend to blame management for not giving them enough freedom or trust. Which might be the same thing, in fact!

Meanwhile everybody seems to agree that without management, everything could fall apart and, in most organisations, it will. But then management means centralised, top-down decision, putting people in execution mode and basically a command-and control structure. Not very productive in today’s world. The management perspective on the same thing is quite different. In fact, it is the opposite! Most people managers complain about low motivation and morale of their teams, lack of accountability and initiative, consistently missing objectives, being over the budget and late.

“Knowing yourself the way you do, would you trust yourself?”

And here come a few tough questions: is management a pre-defined solution to organise people and achieve results? Or is it just a consequence of people not being able to get things done on their own? The challenge today for most professionals is to prove themselves able, confident, empowered and competent to get the job done. With all the tools and methods today people are getting the right skills and the right structures to perform with little or no involvement from a superior.

Probably there will always be some structures and hierarchies and bosses but for sure the society never looked so flat as it does today. So, showing some leadership might actually be the solution.

© Rolf Consulting