Since I have been exploring leadership in the arts recently I was interested to see that Drew McManus over at Adaptistration was writing about three executive styles- managers, leaders and builders. Today he dealt with the first two. Initially, I didn’t feel the need to post about his entry other than a “Hey, check this out,” until I started pondering it.

The thing that struck me the most was that he didn’t characterize being a leader as the ideal and suggested that, in fact, such a person could be detrimental to organizational success.

Unfortunately, a Leader’s strengths often pull double duty by serving as their weakness. An over reliance on senior staff can put the administration in jeopardy if personnel turnover is too high. And since most Leaders tend to under-perform when directly managing certain aspects of the organization they end up spending inordinate amounts of time keeping the organization running. The result is an organization that suffers from continually falling short of their goals and an executive leader suffering from a severe case of burnout.

Usually I have seen managers and leaders compared as in this article where managers are listed as “Perpetuates group conflicts” and “Doesn’t insure imagination, creativity, or ethical behavior” vs. leaders who “Works to develop harmonious interpersonal relationships” and “Uses personal power to influence the thoughts and actions of others.” (Note: Yes, article was written in 1996, but it was updated a few months ago and an update article written in 2003 did not change this view.)

This site too, suggests that one should aim to be a leader rather than a manager.

What Drew was writing made sense to me. A lot more sense than the many articles I have read throughout my life urging one to eschew managing in favor of solely cultivating leadership traits. So I started looking around for what people were saying about leadership vs. management. Not only did I find the websites linked to above, but some sites that support Drew’s like Mulhauser Consulting, Ltd. which bases their view on empirical studies.

I also came across this entry on Management Craft blog which seemed to lay out the whole leadership vs. management debate practically. (Comments are very interested too) The writer, Lisa Haneberg makes an interesting observation that:

“There is a shortage of great management in many of today’s corporations. Perhaps the management vs. leadership mindset is one reason for this. Leadership is certainly the “sexier” of the two and I wonder if some have abandoned developing excellent management skills because they want to be a leader.”

(Note: Somehow I neglected the link to the Management Craft blog entry when I first wrote this entry.)

Came across this bit of information before but forgot to write about it.

Google has a word processing program which is reputed to be as good as MS Word in terms of its features. One benefit it has over Word though is that multiple people can work on the same document simultaneously from different places. No more having to create a read-only copy if someone else is working on a document you want to view.

This has great potential for a lot of different people. Students can work on different sections of papers together while sitting side by side or in the comfort of their own homes, perhaps chatting about each segment using an instant messaging program.

Likewise for arts organizations, different people can work on different sections of a grant proposal narrative at the same time while referencing stats and language the lead writer is using. The online storage reportedly saves as information is being typed rather than at programmed intervals. Google Docs also allows people to telecommute from home or lets a traveling supervisor check on progress, proof and edit from different time zones without worrying about whether software at their destination will be compatible.

A number of years ago I was reading an article that suggested one day our personal computers would regress back to essentially being work stations again with all our software and information processing being accessed from central host locations over the Internet. It looks like that is drawing closer to being true.

On the other hand, given that Google seems to save information on every search conducted via their service, you may want to consider just how sensitive the information you are typing into their word processors and spreadsheets might be. Since most of your financial information is available on Guidestar if you are a non-profit, having that information floating around probably isn’t too big a concern. You probably want to forgo using Google Docs to write a report to a lawyer detailing financial malfeasance though.