Leadership and Management

9/15/2011

I differentiated between leadership and management in my book, "So You Want to Be a Leader," in a simplistic way, I wrote that managers handle things and leaders handle people or words to that effect.  Said another way, management is about the employment of resources - it's about the business metrics.  Leadership is about the people metrics.  It takes both to achieve excellence.

Our cadets are in the unique position to grow in the people metrics.  It will take college and or on the job experience to acquire the business metrics.

Somes years ago I had the opportunity to frequent the corner pubs in Australia and England.  I noticed, particularly in the bars frequented by the Aussie and English military how often and well they sang together as they "got into their cups."  We don't have that tradition in the U.S., and it is sad, because those pubs were so much fun.  Recently, while reading a simple poem by Carl Sandberg, it reminded me how music makes fun in so many countries.  The poem is entitled "Happiness" and goes like this:

- I asked professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.

- And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men

- They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them

- And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines River

- And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the tree with their women and children, a keg of beer and an accordian.