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Beware of the pat on the back

By Me | May 22, 2007

Sometimes, people are a pain.

At a recent management workshop, the presenter talked about how there are some people who are good with one-on-one relationship building and dragging the best out of people and herding all the cats in one direction. Those people are Managers.

Then there are other people who are not that good with detail. They are better at looking out at the horizon and seeing the big picture; they are the custodians of vision. Those people are Leaders.

If Managers are good at herding the cats in one direction, Leaders are good at pointing everybody at that direction and at keeping their eye on the prize. While the Managers handle the day-to-day stuff that gets you from point A to point B, the Leaders are busy mapping out point J.

Now, I’m in the middle of working to get a non-profit research outfit off the ground. I’m working with a guy who wants me to do some things I don’t want to do because, while those things might make the outfit some extra (and much needed) capacity-building money, they would be inconsistent with the mission of the outfit.

I’m playing Leader to his Manager, except that he is fighting me on it because I’m pointing my non-profit in a certain direction and that direction is interfering with some of the management choices he’d like to have available to get us there.

To which I say, ‘Tough shit. Make different choices.’

He thinks I’m being an over-zealous, self-righteous prig. I think there’s not much point in declaring yourself to be a non-profit working for the public benefit if you wind up doing private work for private check-writers when said work will not in any way benefit the public. (Sorry I’m being so vague but … well, you know.)

The kicker is that this guy isn’t really thinking about what is going to further the mission of the non-profit in all of this. He is thinking about it in terms of what he wants to use it for, in the context of his own business interests.

My statement to him on the subject was this: our organization is a non-partisan, non-profit educational institution devoted to a certain, very specific type of economic research. It is not going to be used as the research arm of anybody’s marketing strategies consultancy.

If that makes me a self-righteous prig, so be it.

The whole thing is taking a lot of the joy out of the process for me. I’m doing something to address some socio-economic and policy issues that I think matter a lot, which is really exciting and gratifying.

Or it would be if it weren’t for this other stupid stuff.

It’s also making the whole thing take more of my time than I can spare. After all, I do have a for-profit business to run, too.

You know, there’s a reason why I usually try to work alone.

[tags]non-profit, management issues, management style[/tags]

Topics: Stuff |

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