In one of my recent flights (and i had too many of them …) to Melbourne Australia i pulled a book which caught my attention just few minutes before the plane took off.
Its one of those moments where you see something and it takes you few seconds to decide that “that’s the one”.
I’m referring to Seth Godin book Tribes.
Tribes is one of those inspiring books that makes you think during and long after you read it.
Here are some of Seth wisdom that i picked from the book
Leadership is not management:
Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done,..leadership is about creating a change that you believe in.
Movement have leaders and movement makes things happen. Leaders have followers Managers have employees. Managers makes widgets. Leaders make change.
…
Managers manage by using authority the factory gives them. You listen to your manager or you loose your Job. A manager can’t make change because that’s not his Job. His Job is to complete tasks assigned to him by someone else in the factory.
Leaders on the other hand don’t care that much for organizational structure or the official blessing of whatever the factory they work for. They use passion and ideas to lead people, as appose to using threats and Burecreacrucy to manage them. Leaders must become aware of how the organization they works, because this awareness allows them to use it. Leaders doesn’t always start at the top but it always manage to effect the folks at the top.
How do you manage leaders?
Given that leaders can appear anywhere in an organization, it seems to me that the job of senior management is to find them and support them. Leaders have tribes of their own, and someone needs to lead those tribes. Which leads to the idea of positive deviance.
As a general rule, managers don't like deviants. By definition, deviance from established standards is a failure for a manager working to deliver on spec. So, most of the time, most managers work hard to stamp out deviance (and the deviants who create it). Managers stamp out deviants. That's what they do.
Leaders understand a different calculus. Leaders understand that change is not only omnipresent, but the key to success.
And it turns out that employees who are committed to change and engaged in making things happen are happier and more productive. Putting these two facts together, it's not hard to come to the conclusion that you desperately need more leaders, more deviants-more agents of change, not fewer
Change
Change isn't made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness, later.
Food for thoughts…
