Good Leadership Is More Important Than Good Management Essay

Leadership and management are crucial factors that determine the company’s further development. Management tries to control everything even humans, whereas leaders attempt to liberate humans and powers (Kotter 2001). Generally, the work management does is to make plan and budget, organize, control and solve the problem. The aim of management is to set up the rules. The leader’s work is to ensure the direction and target of the company, integrate all the resources, impel and encourage employees, its aim is to change, and it is obviously that this is the way leadership runs (Kotter 2001). More specially, leadership cares about the value and meaningfulness, whether the target the organization has achieved is worth or not. Leadership follows closely to humans, the dignity, value, potential and development. If management is concentrate on technology and means, procedures and methods, then leadership put emphasis on humanity and objective, the results and art (Northouse 2007). For example, management is focus on the function of power, but leadership cares the effect of enchantment. In fact, for every organization even country, they need both leadership and management. The aim cannot be achieved if lacking any one of these two. Since the leadership is playing the direction instructor role in the management process, this essay believes leadership is more crucial. Therefore, the essay will first have a literature review on leadership and management, following that, it will explain the interdependence of both two functions. Finally, it will illustrate the reason why leadership is more important through examples. Many studies have research on leadership and management from different perspective. According to Kotter (2001), the meaning of management is dealing with the assigned task, managers do key works such as planning, organizing and controlling, and then achieve the expected goal. Through management, the current organization performance can be maintained efficiently (Cuban 1988). It is certainly that in the management process, the leadership will always exhibits, but the main functions of management is preservation rather change (Bush & Heystek 2003). Both of management and leadership have their special value towards various situations, however, management deals with the technical issues while leadership deals with values (Bush and Heystek 2003). According to Kouzes and Posner (2002), leadership is the ability how the leader encourages others to volunteer to make efforts to the organization. As for leadership, it has five following styles: country club management, team management, organization man management, impoverished management, and authority obedience (Blake & Mouton 2003). Among these five styles, â€Å"team management† is proposed most. Blake and Mouton (2003) think the leadership is the ability to deal with both production and humans, and team management is the most appropriate one. In terms of Fiedler (1967), the situation has more influence on leadership. Three main situations are leader member relationship, the structure of the mission and the authority power. Different situation will show different leadership. Furthermore, all these three divisions also have impact on the leadership. Tannenbaum and Schmidt (1958) conclude four main styles, autocratic, known as the telling style, the leader takes the mission and let it known to the group; persuasive (the selling style), the leader would like to motivate the group without discussion, only through persuading them to believe the tasks is a good chance; consultative (the consulting style), the leader will consider member’s advices and their feelings when facing the decisions; democratic (the joining style), the leader will invite discussion, in this step the leader is not only a decision maker. Presently, how the organization can adapt to the fast changing society has become a critical problem for people to think about. In such a competitive era which is compete on knowledge (Bell 1999), an organization, particularly an enterprise which wants to gain the everlasting success should focus on both leadership and management, in this way to adapt to the changing world and keep the competitive advantage (Welch, J & Welch, S 2005). Although the leadership and management are diverse, both of they are very crucial to the organization and interact each other. Therefore, the organization needs both the objective view from managers and vision brought by the leaders (Bolman & Deal 1997). For achieving the vision and keeping high efficiency of the organization, it is necessary to pay great attention to both leadership and management. The interdependent relationship between leadership and management can be illustrated through balanced scoreboard (Kaplan & Norton 2005) shown in the following figure. The Banlance Scorecard (Kaplan & Norton 2005) According to the figure above, it looks into the key area of a business, external area like consumers, financial performance, internal one such as innovation and learning process. It clearly shows a comprehensive view of the two functions. Managers should use measurable methods to have a deep understanding of consumers’ demands, and leader should give the company goal with these demands. Managers are required to use any internal business strategy to let the consumer satisfied while leaders are give all the supports that reach that strategy. So under nowadays such a fierce globalized competition, every company wants to hold the consumers and market share. So the managers and leaders are pretty interdependent, with leaders are responsible for search the demand to adapt the change, and managers control the process and give advices. It is thus clear that good leadership and good management are very important aspects of an organization, however starts from the key esprit of the firm, leadership represents the excellence of the enterprise, and it could realize the value of every employee. Leadership needs sustained training and creation, it is regard as the key factors that influence the development, alternative and reproduce of an organization. Based on this understanding, compared with good management good leadership is a more critical issue. Following section will take Sony and P&G as cases to explain why leadership is more important than management. Sony is a leading firm in the high-tech manufactures industry, it first develops the memory stick and MP3 player, but its sales revenue did not performance well. And soon after the emerging of Samsung and Apple, Sony was soon surpassed by the two competitors. Samsung has more brand value than Sony since 2005, and the Ipod and Macbook from Apple are popular rather than Vaio (Chang 2008). Actually a firm like Sony who can perform on the international stage will of course have a good management within the company for until now Sony still do a very good job. And from the external environment, the different strategies Sony and Samsung takes will not lead to the different performance on its sales. Sony has the right strategy, the complete resources, the powerful energy, but the winner turns to Apple and Samsung. Why Sony could so easily be surpassed by the competitors? The main reason why such gap exists is because the company lacks of the leadership. Many enterprises failed due to the unsuccessful integration of strategy and operation. Take Sony’s competition with Apple as an example, Apple has no core technology on the MP3 player market, all the things they do is to implement the innovation with its computer processor technology. But in the contrast, although Sony has every factor to success, the wrong steps results in the lost in the MP3 player market. Sony took defensive strategy rather than offensive one, such strategy is not appropriate to its market and organizational management. There are two characteristic of current market: the rapid change of new technology and the fast depreciation of old ones. Sony actually do little effort to face the two emerging companies, the new leader team organized by the formal president of Sony could not meet their new visions. Why Apple and Samsung could win is not only because they know the market trend and importance of innovation, but also because the right vision from the leaders. The vision is not a dream but based on the careful market analysis and knowledge of current organizational situation. This is the reason Sony failed in the competition and meanwhile it also shows the more importance of leadership than management. Senge (1994) said that an efficient leadership is that the leader could change the path of an organization’s development and destiny, because every success eventually depends on the leaders. P&G, a global successful company in FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) industry, their leadership management is a good experience to learn. There has a rule in P&G, inter-dependence is a lifestyle (McDonald 2009). Every department, products and areas among the company should trust each other and closely cooperate. P&G is proud of getting the success if take other’s advices. The rule shows P&G has make a closely partnership with their suppliers, consumers, communities and employees. In this way, P&G has built an entire smooth value chain and leads to a multiple- win situation. Good leadership shown in P&G Company as following: Friendly and long-term cooperation with partners. P&G’s leadership with partners could be shown as they always built a long-term relationship. Many partners think P&G has enough respect toward its partners. The reason P&G seldom change partners is due to two reasons: first is in this way to keep the brand image, second is P&G hopes the partners should be familiar with P&G’s business, thus they can reduce lots costs and time. Innovative cooperate strategy. P&G’s another leadership performs to be creative cooperation with Wal-Mart. When many manufacturers are complained about big retail stores such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour, P&G always take an initiative position in the bargaining with the retailers. P&G make an evolution on its supply chain. They use the information technology to realize the continuous replenishment program,which manage the products by categories. The team from P&G and Wal-Mart are from many departments such as sales, marketing, operation, IT and finance, but they share the same goal. In the cooperate process, P&G carefully absorb the advices from the retailers and at the same time, P&G design some products for Wal-Mart. The two companies also intend to expand their business into other areas. Provide training and communication with employees. P&G regards people as their wealth. P&G provide systematic training program, internal promotion. Most of the management is recruiting internally; this basically increased the employee’s loyalty. Besides, P&G not only provide a competitive wages, but also its comfortable working environment. All these are the elements that can show P&G performance on leadership. P&G takes more social responsibility. Aims at sustainable management and environment protection, from 1994, P&G would release its global environment reports to the public annually. Its target is to show a clear vision of the company’s work for improving the global environment. Commitment to consumers. P&G’s belief is they produce and offer best quality products in order to improve the life of global consumers. As returns, they will first gain the leading market position and increasing profit, thus to make the society prosperity which our employees, stakeholders works and lives in. P&G put customers as the first position; they listen to their suggestions, including sales and R&D. P&G set the free call for consumers in order to keep connection with consumers, they always think and solve the problems from consumers perspective and explore the potential demands. 3E model. The 3E model of P&G is ultimately an excellent indication of their works on leadership. The 3E model includes: envision, energize, enable. Envision encourages people to have a clear plan and strategy toward their targets, concentrate on achieve the goal; find the possibility and not the limitations. Energize inspire employees to listen, understand and trust, approve the employee’s performance. Enable improve employees productivities. And also create possible conditions for employees to get success. The 3E model seems very simple but it has included everything related to the leadership. In this model, leadership is a behavior not a job. It clearly gives three missions to the managers: setting the goal, inspiring the employees, provide any helps. From all these aspects of P&G case, people can know that leadership is not just depends on one person or one group, it rely on the whole organization. And leadership not only considers for small aspects such as company strategies, but also considers more about the social responsibility it have in the society. Generally speaking, there are three outcomes of excellent leadership: -The productivity. The only results when the employees cannot finish his job on time are the waste of time and the reduction of quality. The main reason of such consequence is the uncertain guidance and follow-ups. If the leader cannot offer guidance the employees need, then the job cannot achieve the expected level. So lots of time and strength are wasted thus reduced the productivity. -The stability within the organization. As said above, the current society is based on knowledge. If the organization wants to approve the value of the employees, it should provide continuous training and developing opportunities for them. In this way to show the organizations confirmation on their value through spending time and money invest on the knowledge. The company could use such method to increase the stability of the employees and improve the efficiency. -The consumer’s satisfaction. The excellent external consumer services are based on the internal customer service. If the company could realize that the employees are the key customers for them, then they could get the chance to earn huge profit. As a leader, the company’s attitude towards the employees mainly determines whether they wish to work for the company. To care the employees give the company a chance to provide an excellent consumer services from inside-out. Bass and Avolio (1994) mentioned that the leadership should include behaviors like inspiring others, intellectual stimulation, coaching and development, respect and faith. This paper thinks, the leadership is, under the organization’s process of implement its target, the ability of the leader influence other related be led and the interaction between leader and the one to be led. The leadership itself is not only a capability but also a process. In the process, it includes the process of onstruct a binary relationship between the leader and followers, and also includes the functions leader set the organization, improve the efficiency, and leaders help organization adapt the environment, develop and innovative process.? Conclusion To sum up, good management is also an important issue concerning the organizational development. The reason why leadership is more important is that leadership is on a higher level. Take riding the horse as example; if the stableman has an excellent technique to control the horse, perhaps the stableman has management talent. But if he always goes to the wrong direction, that is to say, though the high technique of his management, but still cannot achieve the target, then he is doing the incorrect thing. Clawson (2008) said that leadership is nothing if without changes. So under nowadays a fiercely global trend competition and rapid changing of information and technology, leadership becomes more important for the organization. But only integrate the power of these two functions can, the organization develop on the right way.