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S01 of 12
Part
Leadership foundations

Leader as architect

Leaders shape behavior twice: directly, by what they do, and indirectly, by what they build around people.

01

Readings

Bernstein, Raffaelli and Margolis · HBS note, 2014

Leader-as-Architect

A leader is also a designer. The setting you build keeps working when you are not in the room.

  • Most of what people do at work is shaped by the setting they work in, not by direct orders.
  • So a big part of leading is designing that setting on purpose: structure, systems, culture and the people you put in roles.
  • Good design makes the right behavior the easy behavior.

John P. Kotter · Harvard Business Review, 2001 (first published 1990)

What Leaders Really Do

Management copes with complexity. Leadership copes with change. Organizations need both.

  • Planning and budgeting is management. Setting a direction is leadership.
  • Organizing and staffing is management. Aligning people behind the direction is leadership.
  • Controlling and problem solving is management. Motivating and inspiring is leadership.
  • Most companies are overmanaged and underled, but strong leadership with weak management is no better.
Case
Mount Everest, 1996 (Roberto and Carioggia, HBS)
02

See it

Management or leadership? Sort six tasks.

Lab 01.A

  1. Build next year’s budget

  2. Explain where the team is heading and why

  3. Hire people and assign them to roles

  4. Get other departments behind the plan

  5. Track results against plan and fix gaps

  6. Help people push through a hard change

Kotter: management copes with complexity, leadership copes with change.

03

Frameworks

Management versus leadership

Kotter

S01

Management copes with complexity. Leadership copes with change.

ManagementLeadership
Planning and budgetingSetting a direction
Organizing and staffingAligning people
Controlling and problem solvingMotivating and inspiring
04

Check yourself

Q1Setting a direction is to leadership as ______ is to management.

Q2Kotter says most companies are

Q3Leader as architect means

0 of 3 answered.
05

Think it through

  1. P1Where have you seen a well-designed setting make good behavior easy?
  2. P2When did a team you were on have strong management and weak leadership, or the reverse?