Management Theories for Leaders

Leave Yourself in the Best Possible Position

Do not become so narrowly focused on a stated objective that you pass up opportunities encountered along the way.  Moreover, create sufficiently ambitious objectives in the first place.  Ensure that they don’t leave a job partially done.  Be thorough in framing objectives.  The effective manager misses no opportunity and is never too narrowly focused to be thorough.

Use All Available Talent

Effective leadership is consultative.  It welcomes and actively seeks multiple perspectives on any given problem.  It does not squander, but rather leverages all available brainpower.

Strategy vs. Tactics – Be a Steamroller

Recognize the difference between strategy and tactics.  Strategy is an overall, big picture plan, which includes a set of goals.  Tactics are the means by which you intend to carry your strategy.  Tactics include objectives, which are steps toward goals.  This kind of double-barreled leadership approach will help ensure any organization has a consistency of purpose and direction, yet retains the flexibility to respond to problems and crises and to exploit opportunities when they arise.

Work on Developing a Superiority Complex

We must have a superiority complex not an inferiority complex.  Why accept a self-diagnosed “inferiority complex”?  What does it gain us?  If we are going to diagnose our mental state, why not bestow upon ourselves a superiority complex?  At least the self-appraisal has a chance of producing the results we want.

Glenn Kennedy, Applied Manufacturing Solutions