Management 1

First of all:
My thanks go out to Luke Schubert of Adelaide, Southern Australia for commenting on this blog with his examples of great leadership. If you have been paying attention to international news you know that Australia has been going through an extensive drought, leading to huge wildfires. It's been hotter than, well... Australia... in the summer time - which is 40+ Celsius right now.
Luke and his family, including two youngsters, haven't been able to sleep properly in the heat. Nevertheless, he has been making time to participate in the on-line BootCamp / ResultsCamp that is underway, doing his regular day job, his dad stuff, and passed on his examples in the Comments to last week's blog. Thanks Luke – Beauty mate!

My intent is to collect such stories and add them to the leadership articles in the near future.

Second:
I was alerted last week via Twitter (www.twitter.com/reevesresults) of a blog by “RandsinRepose” (www.randsinrepose.com) on management (“A Disclosure”). Specifically it is about the situation of successful “specialist” being asked to lead his team and become their manager. It was very interesting reading about the dilemmas, anomalies, and other upsets in the work life of a new “manager”. (The quotation marks will be explained in a moment.)

And that got my sweetheart Vickie and I into another great discussion, this time about “Management”.

Since she is a business coach (www.adaptivecoach.com), as well as my consulting and training partner, and focuses on the Generation Y (also known as Millennials) cohort moving into management assignments, and has her own experiences dealing with Boomer Generation managers, we just had the best time exploring the whole “management” thing.

Once we had solved world hunger in that discussion, we agreed that it seemed that the “Great Forgetting”, that Daniel Quinn describes in “Ishmael” and his other books on the nature of our Taker culture, has happened with respect to the general understanding, or the lack of understanding, on “Management”. It appears that the basics of “Management” aren't taught, heard, or absorbed in organizations these days, and in our consulting lives, Vickie and I run into examples of this regularly.

Further; the distinctions between leadership and management are unclear, so why not jump into the “Management” water as well as talk about leadership in this blog?

So at the risk of sounding like the Four Yorkshiremen “dreamin' of living in a corridor” (luxury!) who believe the youngsters these days don't appreciate how good they have it, I thought some fun with “Management” might be in order. (Thanks Monty Python)

Question: So, Mr. Reeves, I take it that you feel there is a gap in understanding in what “Management” is all about?

Answer: Very perceptive! I keep running into confusion, mis-understanding, and general belly-aching about it.

Q: And you are just the Saviour to lead us all out of this wilderness?

A: Of course.

Q: How modest!

A: Think nothing of it. Just show up again next week after I have compiled my extensive knowledge and experience into a few thousand pages of notes.

Q: Wait a second – you haven't explained your use of quotation marks above around “manager and “Management”.

A: You're right.