Question
Is it true that "managers do things right but leaders do the right things"?
Answer
I think Yishan Wong is dismissing the idea as a content-free clever turn of phrase too quickly. Partly his answer is a prescription rather than a description, and partly he's unconsciously added the adjective "good" to both managers and leaders. As a prescription for good leaders/managers he is right.
In my experience, this doing the right thing/doing things right distinction is mostly correct in larger, older companies. It's not a prescription for good leadership or management. It is a description of a mediocre reality that inevitably emerges with age.
The distinction emerges with maturity for the very simple reason that "leaders" tend to be at the senior levels where they make choices about what to do, but don't actually get involved in the doing, while "managers" tend to be in the middle where they don't have much meaningful autonomy in deciding what to do, but must get it done right. It's an expedient division of labor that makes everbody's job easier. To the extent that everybody has some irreducible minimum level of "do the right thing" authority, because leaders cannot define every last detail, it gets squeezed out through a process called "alignment."
This distinction is often absent in young, fast-growing companies that tend to have room for significant initiative and hands-on involvement at all levels, and the individual talented and energetic people who actually want to work that hard. In mature companies often the room is simply not there, and it takes a combative maverick with a taste for bureaucratic warfare to create and take on the double challenge in some form.
The tradeoff appears with maturity after cash flows stabilize and the expedient division of labor starts to make sense in the short term, and thanks to Wall Street, short-term pressures are what end up driving the company.
My answer is based on the one definition of leadership I do agree with, A. G. Lafley's: the defining characteristic of the leader is that “he/she must define and interpret the meaningful external reality for others.”
The division of labor is dangerous because this is too narrow a window into reality, so if the leader is the only one doing it, s/he can and will miss important things. It is also dangerous because having individuals (classic Dilbert-style managers) inside win windowless rooms is what creates internal pathologies. But recognizing the danger does not mean it is always possible to allow everybody to be a leader in the Lafley sense.
In my experience, this doing the right thing/doing things right distinction is mostly correct in larger, older companies. It's not a prescription for good leadership or management. It is a description of a mediocre reality that inevitably emerges with age.
The distinction emerges with maturity for the very simple reason that "leaders" tend to be at the senior levels where they make choices about what to do, but don't actually get involved in the doing, while "managers" tend to be in the middle where they don't have much meaningful autonomy in deciding what to do, but must get it done right. It's an expedient division of labor that makes everbody's job easier. To the extent that everybody has some irreducible minimum level of "do the right thing" authority, because leaders cannot define every last detail, it gets squeezed out through a process called "alignment."
This distinction is often absent in young, fast-growing companies that tend to have room for significant initiative and hands-on involvement at all levels, and the individual talented and energetic people who actually want to work that hard. In mature companies often the room is simply not there, and it takes a combative maverick with a taste for bureaucratic warfare to create and take on the double challenge in some form.
The tradeoff appears with maturity after cash flows stabilize and the expedient division of labor starts to make sense in the short term, and thanks to Wall Street, short-term pressures are what end up driving the company.
My answer is based on the one definition of leadership I do agree with, A. G. Lafley's: the defining characteristic of the leader is that “he/she must define and interpret the meaningful external reality for others.”
The division of labor is dangerous because this is too narrow a window into reality, so if the leader is the only one doing it, s/he can and will miss important things. It is also dangerous because having individuals (classic Dilbert-style managers) inside win windowless rooms is what creates internal pathologies. But recognizing the danger does not mean it is always possible to allow everybody to be a leader in the Lafley sense.