Management is control. In business we called it triple constraint of management. There's three things and only three things that you can control. You can control quality, time, and money. Whichever one of those three takes precedent the other two will suffer.
If quality drives your organization or your product, or your service, the other two will suffer. It takes more time and more money to create the quality. If price determines your product or service , then you will have to give up the quality …To do it quickly it will cost you more money and the faster you go the less quality you will have.
So control is the management, the interplay of time, quality and money.
So where are people?
Well people come under leadership. There's a big difference.
In WWII, Dwight Eisenhower was the allied supreme commander of all the forces. He would train his generals, he would take a chain and stack it up on the table. Then he would ask the generals, “If I push that chain, which way will it go?” and he would hear a lot of answers.
The correct answer is you really don't know.
But he said that, “If I took the chain and I picked it up by the end and I pulled the chain, which way will it go? The answer is it will follow you.” And there is the essence of leadership.
If you push the people [horse], down deep inside, you really do not know which way they'll go or what they're really thinking. But if you can lead them and get them to follow you, then you have the skill everyone should have, which is to be a leader.– Bob Davids
The instant I listened to this TED Talk I knew I had to share it with you. Bob's analogies of management vs leadership show very clear similarities with methods we see (and may have used at some point during our education) to manage or push the horse about. But for myself when I see someone leading, without ego, and allowing the horse to follow it is like living art and worth sitting down to take in while the vision lasts.
What were your impressions of this TED Talk?
And if you're curious about the book he mentions I know I'll be ordering a copy myself: Up The Organization by Robert C. Townsend
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Thanks for posting! Taming the ego is far more difficult than taming another creature.
You’re telling me! 🙂
And it is very difficult to explain to someone that their ego is in charge when their ego is in charge.
Great point! I think this is because we so often feel our ego’s voice is actually our own, it’s our identity until we realize it isn’t.
For example, a great many thoughts that run through my brain are actually my ego, and if I allow myself to just grab onto one of those passing thoughts as though it were real, or even some representation of who I really am, then I let my ego take control.
I’m doing the Artist’s Way for Equestrians right now on the blog which has some excellent exercises that do, in some small ways, address facets of the ego. But I’d really love to set up a Life Coaching group, perhaps once the AW is finished up, that touches on ways to identify and set aside our ego. I’ve always enjoyed them in the past, but like anything you wish to master it takes practice and repetition. 🙂