Okay, full disclosure here, I am a speaker and seminar leader, and I like to talk about leadership and management. I am not alone.
It occurred to me today that we are at a point in human history where there is more education on management and leadership than has ever existed in human history. We have more graduates with degrees in management than ever before. We have had the benefits of a veritable flood of books by well-known successful managers and leaders, many of which have sold millions of copies.
Given that, you would think… you would think… that contemporary management and leadership would be at its apex, and would be measurably superior to management and leadership of the past. I want to believe that it is, but a cursory glance around me makes me wonder. Granted, we enjoy certain technological advances such as the Internet and many extraordinary breakthroughs in medical technology. But that’s not really a result of management; we’ve been experiencing a nonstop explosion of technological advances for the last, what, hundred years? 500 years?
My real question is about bigger picture items. While we have had many technological advances, in the realm of day-to-day life, are you seeing any manifestations of superior management? Is our collective general health better than it was 30 years ago? Do you sleep better? Is it easier to travel by car, rail, or air? Do you have more leisure time? Is the world a safer place?
With all this readily available management and leadership training, was there not one person at Lehman Brothers who perhaps had read “In Search of Excellence” or “Good to Great”? When one looks at the gulf oil spill, was there not one person on that oil rig platform possibly thumbing through a copy of “The Checklist Manifesto”? Apparently not. Or if they were, apparently it didn’t sink in, no pun intended.
With all this management training and info, how did we miss training so many people in such well paid positions of high authority?
I realize that it is easy to become nostalgic, and look back at the “good old days” when Ike was in the White House. I realize that we had lots of ineffective and/or incompetent management 10, 20, and 30 years ago. And I have no doubt that there are many good things happening today. My question is, with all the money and resources being spent on training people to be better leaders and managers, far more than we have spent in the past, are you seeing any across the board improvement? Do we have management and leadership skills today that exceed those of the people who won World War II, built the national highway system, and cured polio? Do you see evidence of overall / generally superior management and leadership from your perspective? Because if you don’t, this begs the question, as to just how effective all this current management and leadership training is. It’s not enough to just go at it every day and hope for the best. At some point you have to do an audit and ask yourself, is this stuff actually working?
© Justin Locke
