Management vs. Leadership: Welcome to the Machine

I was working with a leader the other day and he actually said “this company should work like a machine”.  I groaned inwardly.  This is such antiquated thinking, but it’s still out there, and a reason why we’re still stuck in ‘command-and-control’ style leadership.

This idea that an organization is a machine goes all the way back to the industrial revolution and Henry Ford, and we already know it doesn’t work.  It thinks of the organization as a machine and people as parts that can be yanked out and replaced when they don’t work.  People aren’t people, and in a very real sense they become the cogs to keep the machine running.  This is management – you manage the machine, count inputs and outputs, and fix what needs fixing with a wrench and a hammer.  

Here’s the problem: machines don’t grow.  They don’t evolve. They don’t have values, or a mission.  Most importantly, they don’t have vision.

When we’re talking leadership, an organization isn’t a machine, it’s an organism.  It grows, it can have direction, and it creates.  Machines don’t create and innovate, the wheels just keep turning.  Organisms innovate all the time, whether in reaction to the environment or situations.  So a leader who wants to see an organization innovate and grow needs vision. 

It’s not enough to keep the wheels running to the status quo.  A true leader needs vision, not just mechanic’s skills.

In an organization you need both to some degree, but when the people at the tip-top think of their organization as a machine, it doesn’t bode well for those below them.  Culture drips down from the top, and if the top-level leadership thinks of their organization as a machine, it means they don’t have the kind of vision and innovation necessary to do more than keep the status quo Not a good sign for organizational health in the long run.

I can’t speak for all of my readers, but I know I’m not a cog, I’m a person.  I also know I’ve quit jobs for being treated like a cog.  I have way too much growing and learning to do to be just another wheel, and I believe everyone else does too.  Maybe there are some businesses that will click along as a machine and keep doing things the same way they’ve been done until the last wheel stops turning, but that doesn’t seem like the best way to move into the future, does it?