Customer Reviews

Harvard Business Review on Leadership (Harvard Business Review Paperback Series)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Excellent book with eight fantastically different views on Leadership. Describes fundamental differences between leadership and Management and brings forth thought process which can help professionals in all fields. Contents are 1) The managers Job (folclore and fact), 2) What leaders really do, 3)managers and leaders (are they different), 4) The discipline of building Character, 5) the ways CEO's lead (5 different ways gathered from study of 160 CEO's),6)The human side of management, 7) the work of leadership, 8) whatever happened to the take-charge manager, also contains brief background about the contributors. Each chapter is from a different contributor

Much of the contextual material in this volume is out-of-date, given the fact that the eight articles originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review years ago (1975-1998). However, I think the core concepts remain sound and provide a valuable frame-of-reference for understanding the advances in effective decision making that have occurred during the last five years. For example, if anything, Henry Mintzberg's article ("The Manager's Job") is even more relevant today than it was when it first appeared in the July/August issue in 1975. In it, he examines "four myths about the manager's job that do not bear up under careful scrutiny of the facts," such as "the manager is a reflective, systematic planner." In fact, Mintzberg suggests that managers work "at an unrelenting pace, that their activities are characterized by brevity, variety, and discontinuity, and that they are strongly oriented to action and dislike reflective activities." Mind you, this was an opinion expressed more than 30 years ago.

No brief commentary such as this can do full justice to the rigor and substance of the eight articles. It remains for each reader to examine the list to identify which subjects are of greatest interest to her or him. My own opinion is that all of the articles are first-rate. One of this volume's greatest benefits is derived from the fact that a variety of perspectives are provided by a number of different authorities on the same general subject. In this instance, leadership.

Readers will especially appreciate the provision of an executive summary that precedes each article. They facilitate, indeed expedite frequent review of key points which - presumably - careful readers either underline or highlight. Also of interest is the "About the Contributors" section that includes suggestions of other sources to consult. Here are questions to which the authors of the other seven articles respond:

What do leaders do? (John P. Kotter)
Comment: "Institutionalizing a leadership-centered culture is the ultimate act of leadership."

How do managers and leaders differ? (Abraham Zaleznik)
Comment: "Managers see themselves as conservators and regulators of an existing order of affairs with which they personally identify and from which they gain rewards [whereas] leaders tend to be twice-born personalities, people who feel separate from their environment."

How do "defining moments" help to develop character? (Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.)
Comment: "Defining moments force us to find a balance between our hearts in all their idealism and our jobs in all their messy reality."

Note: In Leading Quietly (2002) and then Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership Through Literature (2006), Badaracco develops in greater depth many of the core concepts introduced in this article.

What are the ways in which CEOs lead? (Charles M. Farkas and Suzy Wetlaufer)
Comment: "No matter where a company is located or what it makes, its CEO must develop a guiding, overarching philosophy about how he or she can best add value.... A leadership approach is a coherent, explicit style of management, not a reflection of personal style. This is a critical distinction."

Why are there so few great managers? (Thomas Teal)
Comment: "Great management involves courage and tenacity. It closely resembles heroism."

How to lead others during adaptive change? (Ronald A. Heifetz and Donald L. Laurie)
Comment: "Solutions to adaptive challenges reside not in the executive suite but in the collective intelligence of employees at all levels."

"Whatever happened to the take-charge manager?" (Nitin Nohria and James D. Berkley)
Comment: "Pragmatists understand that it is unrealistic to try to avoid uncertainty. Attempts to deny or ignore it can blind managers to the real contexts in which they are working and prevent them from responding effectively."

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out the recently published Harvard Business Review on Making Smarter Decisions as well as other series title in the Harvard Business Review Paperback Series such as those on Becoming a High-Performance Manager, Change, Corporate Strategy, Decision Making, Effective Communication, the Innovative Enterprise, Leadership, Leadership at the Top, and Measuring Corporate Performance.

Looking for some informative, original and clear thinking about leadership? This book is a great choice! The eight articles in this work cover: the role of leadership, differences between managing and leading, and ways chief executives lead. Each article begins with an executive summary which, for the fast-forward crowd, is a big plus.

So many books are merely ONE GOOD ARTICLE embedded in a thicket of verbiage. Chopping away through such a jungle of verbosity for the gist-of-it-all often proves tedious and disappointing. (Blessed are the laconic!) This book, on the other hand, just serves up a bunch of 'gists' -the pure meat and potatoes of ideas. Happily, the HBSP has published several other collections of this sort on such topics as knowledge management, change, and strategies for growth. Each of these is collection of first-rate 'gists'. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, Stern & Associates, author of Stern's Sourcefinder The Master Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources, Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder, and the Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder.

Another fantastic resource from HBR.

The article titled, "The Manager's Job: Folklore and Fact", by Henry Mintzberg, has been requested for reprint more than 22,000 times in the past two years. Mintzberg did a fascinating study of how managers worked to analyze behavior.

"What Leaders Really Do", by John Kotter, provides a wealth of helpful information. Among the passages I've underlined:

"Leadership complements management; it doesn't replace it..."

"Planning is a management process, deductive in nature... Setting a direction is more inductive..."

"One of the most frequent mistakes that overmanaged and underled corporations make is to embrace 'long-term planning' as a panacea for their lack of direction and inability to adapt to an increasingly competitive and dynamic business environment..."

"In a company without direction, even short-term planning can become a black hole capable of an infinite amount of time and energy."

"Leaders also regularly involve people in deciding how to achieve the organization's vision... This gives people a sense of control..."

All of the articles in this volume are helpful, but these two are the ones I found most interesting.

`The Manager's Job: Folklore and Fact' by Henry Mintzberg
The above article written by Henry Mintzberg in 1975 provides a thoughtful analysis of what managers do as part of their daily routine and exposes the pretensions on myths about managers and how they work. The author also gives us an insight on what roles managers play and what skills are required to be a successful manager.

The main idea behind this article is to provide a clear insight into managerial roles and responsibilities and how they correlate to the challenges and opportunities that manifest in front of a manager. In order to successfully execute the his/her roles and responsibilities a manager is required to acquire skills to foster interpersonal relationships, ability to negotiate, motivate their staff, resolve conflicts, acquire and share information, make decisions.
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`What Leaders Really Do' by John P. Kotter
The above article written by John P. Kotter in 1990, proposes that management and leadership are different yet complementary and in a constantly changing organizational climate managers and leaders cannot function one without the other.

The main idea behind this article can be summarized as follows: "While managers focus on efficiency and tactics, leaders focus on effectiveness and strategy. A successful organization is one that emerges as a winner during uncertain times and strives to attain a perfect balance by combining the strengths of its managers and leaders". The following is a brief contract between the roles of a managers and leaders
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"The Discipline of Building Character", by Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.
The above article written by Joseph Badaracco, Jr. draws a contrast between ethical decisions and defining moments faced by individuals, managers and executives. According to the author an ethical decision clearly has two options, right v/s wrong, whereas a defining moment forces one to choose between two ideals, right and - right. While ethical decisions are easy to make, a defining moment challenge us to choose between two or more ideals.

The main idea behind this article can be summarized as follows, "Professional responsibilities conflict with our values and during these defining moments one must choose between right and right." The article explains three types of defining moments, "Who am I?", "Who are we?" and "Who is the company?" and educates readers by helping them learn skills to identify these three types so that they will be able to effectively navigate the right v/s right decisions they face throughout their career. Such skills, although not part of a manager's job description enable them to build an identity in the organization based on their own understand of what is right. Various sections of the author's article, written in 1998, encourage readers to take a step back and evaluate this conflict not as a dilemma but as an expected tension between two or more valid perspectives.
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`Managers and Leaders: Are They Different' by Abraham Zaleznik
The above article written by Abraham Zaleznik in 1977 makes a case against modern management by enumerating the similarities and differences between managers and leaders. The author argues that managers and leaders differ in their personalities and viewpoints on how they manage order and chaos within an organization. The article discusses how traditional organizational structures and processes have influenced managers to focus exclusively on traits like control, power and competence in order to be successful. This management school of thought discouraged managers to be creative, develop inter-personal traits and build relationships with their team.

The main idea behind this article can be summarized as follows, "Managers are born out of an organization structure and operate on a pre-defined set of processes and control mechanisms, and therefore they have a very good understanding of the business and their job at hand. Managers play an important role in any organization and always solve problems by giving orders and seek stability by controlling and persuading their subordinates to align with organizational goals, processes and procedures. In contrast, Leaders always relate themselves to people and are often idea centric and sometimes deviate from traditional approaches towards solving organizational problems."

There are way too many leadership titles available out there, so I've found it wise to stay with trusted sources and material that has withstood the test of time. HBR does a great job at collecting the best articles and essays in a lot of topics, all good, and I refer to this one frequently. Re-reading articles in this volume helps me keep perspective as I look over the myriad titles that appear every week. Sound principles like those in this book make me a better consultant and trainer, and as an adjunct business prof I use several articles in here with my classes. Very happy to have this.

This is a book regarding leadership and management using some of the most popular essays written for the HBR in the last 30 years. I enjoyed a few of the essays immensely, especially about the difference between management and leadership. It's a short book so spending your valuable time on this one is well worth it and I certainly appreciated the work from the writers. My favorite essay was included as chapter one and it referred to the many roles of today's managers. Amazing work and extremely gratifying since I am a manager. In summary, well worth your time to increase your skills.

HBR binds sets of topically connected articles on major management themes. I love and use with my classes a lot two of them, this one on leadership and the one on change. Think about it, aren't these the two major issues biting you as a manager almost daily? HBR articles are about as good as they get for rubber hitting the road and these two volumes are great reads, and re-reads, and desk references.

This is a very nice book that collaborate on the difference between the managers role and the leaders role, it talks also about the today's organizations and how they are full of managers but with a few leaders.
Managers are necessary to handle day to day tasks, to plan in a certain direction but it needs a leader to set this direction!

The wide variety of articles on leadership covers well items from the basic topics such as the difference between managers and leaders to how someone can be both (and the tensions that can cause!). Two of the best articles were on how leaders really spend their time during the day and how leaders foster an environment in which other people can also be identified and brought forward as leaders.

I would've rated this five stars, but there are a couple of articles (on 'defining moments' and CEOs) that weren't a complete waste of time but seemed too far divorced from the typical leader within a company that I was surprised the HBR didn't find something more likely to be widely applicable to fill the space.