Leading in the Gemba

By Kevin Meyer

Dr. Henry Mintzberg of McGill University's management school penned an article in the latest Business Week decrying a lack of management... not leadership.  He eventually comes to the correct conclusion that traditional "leadership" needs to change... into something similar to what many of us know as "lean leadership."

It became fashionable some years ago to separate "leaders" from "managers"—you know, distinguishing those who "do the right things" from those who "do things right." It sounds good.

Yes, and then many organizations began to think use catchy phrases like "everyone's a leader" and "individual leadership" and such... without truly diving into what real, effective, leadership is.  So what happened?

But think about how this separation works in practice. U.S. businesses now have too many leaders who are detached from the messy process of managing. So they don't know what's going on. We're overled and undermanaged.  Corporate America has had too much of fancy leadership disconnected from plain old management.

So traditional "leadership" has evolved into ego-driven uninformed pontification...

I hear stories about this every day: about CEOs who don't manage so much as deem—pronouncing performance targets, for instance, that are supposed to be met by whoever is doing the real managing.

Moreover, studies show that vital information is typically transmitted to a CEO informally—orally, often, rather than in formal reports. Leaders removed from managing aren't going to get these messages.

So what's missing?  Lean leaders know: the gemba.  The place where it all happens, where value is created, and innovation is born.  Dr. Mintzberg comes to that same conclusion.

American enterprise, so admired around the globe, was not built by currently fashionable "heroic" leadership but with leaders tangibly engaged in managing—and without today's bonuses, I might add.

Being an engaged leader means you must be reflective while staying in the fray—the hectic, fragmented, never-ending world of managing. The reward: access to the ideas flowing around you. As Stanford University emeritus professor James G. March put it: "Leadership involves plumbing as well as poetry."

Very true.  Real leadership, lean leadership, involves a direct and ongoing relationship with the gemba... be it the factory floor, data center, classroom, or lab.  Real leaders teach, challenge, support, and especially learn from the gemba.

Comments

[Jamie Flinchbaugh]

Thanks for sharing this Kevin. I've almost stopped reading Business Week altogether.

Henry Mintzberg I think has gotten a lot of things right over the years, and this is just another one. I think putting leader into job titles is the worst thing we've done, from "team leader" all the way to "executive leadership team." Just because my title says it doesn't mean I'm doing it. And just because Dilbert decries management in general, doesn't mean it is evil. Management is vital. It is not that management is bad. It is that there is bad management, and effective management.

As it applies to lean, I wrote a column about it for Assembly Magazine:
http://www.assemblymag.com/CDA/Articles/Column/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000267083

Jamie Flinchbaugh

[david foster]

A huge part of the problem is the belief that there is something called "strategy," which may be totally disconnected from any substantive knowledge of the business or other activity being strategized. Field Marshal Lord Wavell had some very relevant thoughts.

BTW, I think Mintzberg's paean to Obama is ridiculous. If getting your picture taken using a Blackberry is proof of management prowess, then we have no lack of brilliant managers! There is far too much of this kind of drive-by politics in the legacy media...if Mintzberg wants to argue that Obama is a brilliant manager, then he should write an article on that topic and provide some actual evidence and argument.

[david foster]

...looks like the Wavell link didn't work..try this:

http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_photoncourier_archive.html#111374207497105979