Absolutes in Management…

I have been reading many posts on LinkedIn and various other social media platforms where two absolutes are compared, and readers are encouraged to “think” that one if definitely better than the other.  One example is comparing classroom training with e-learning initiatives or On the Job Training, with people asking: “what is better, x or y?”  You really are comparing apples to oranges in such cases, as each of those initiatives is warranted in certain scenarios, and an absolute cannot be derived. 

I realize that we are in a world driven by bottom lines, and as such, there is a strong drive towards having a specific measure or outcome that will, hopefully, result in the most optimum solution.  Yet I truly find it disturbing to have so many re-posting the infamous “Manager vs. Leader”  articles that circle around Linkedin and Facebook every once in a while.

In an HBR blog entry, John Kotter stresses that these two are “radically different”.  John explains the misconceptions or “mistakes” that people often make in comparing management and leadership, where, for one, management is more about functionality such as planning and budgeting, where leadership is about “people buying in, … empowerment and, most of all, … producing useful change.”

I usually take the “road less travelled by”… so stop thinking in absolutes. You might learn something new!