Managing Leadership^®

In Managing Leadership, I provided a brief description of how the market for leadership training developed, and how suppliers from consultancies and academia rushed to fill it. The intent was to lay the groundwork for a discussion of some of the shortcomings of many of those offerings. But, to be fair, market demand drew them in, and it has kept them coming to this very day.

The same caution applies to much of the market for management advice and guidance, generally. Particularly with the rise and spread of the industrial economy in the 19th and early 20th centuries, increasing numbers of non-governmental enterprises appeared that demanded a large pool of managers with the skills to run them. As the influence of these organizations on society grew, they became an important model of management study (as opposed to the more-or-less strictly military and governmental models that preceded them). Moreover, they also became a market for the insights these studies generated.

As these civilian, commercial organizations became more complex and specialized, the management consulting industry grew and became more sophisticated in serving them. They began to offer specialized expertise in various areas of organizational strategy, development, finance, operations and specific areas of management. As this process continued - indeed, as its progress became more rapid, challenging, and potentially disorienting, even catastrophically so - the market’s supply and demand relationship became more complex and mutually dependent.

That is to say, it has become difficult to tell which is driving the products and services presented in this market. Is demand generating supply, or the reverse? Are managers seeking advice directed at their needs, or their insecurities? Are consultants, academics, and other observers providing what they have discovered is useful, or what they have discovered will sell?

Undoubtedly, there are offerings on both sides of this scale. There is, of course, more than enough room to speculate as to which is more liberally represented. But, as mentioned, to be fair while engaging in that speculation we should also bear in mind who is keeping the market thriving - the consumer: us.

It is useful to read widely, but to benefit from this it is essential to retain possession of your judgment and perspective for engaging in that reading. Valuable insights can occur to you even from material with which you disagree, but you will neither notice nor benefit from that if you don’t maintain your identity and psychic distance while studying it. We’ll consider, next, some ideas about how to establish that.

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Please be sure see all the posts in this series!

1. Marketing Management
2. Defining Management
3. Understanding what we do
4. Understanding who we are
5. Faith or deeds?
6. Doing “certain - and fairly simple - things”
7. The fundamental requirements
8. The basic resource of the business enterprise
9. Making tasks meaningful
10. Making it matter
11. Setting the rules
12. Book Review: Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

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Similar Posts:

• Practicing Management: Faith or deeds?
• Book Review: Management: Tasks, Responsibilites, Practices
• Practicing Management: doing “certain - and fairly simple - things”
• Practicing Management: The fundamental requirements
• Practicing Management: “The basic resource of the business enterprise”

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