by Charley James

Created on: April 09, 2008

Well-managed companies are not always well-led. Moreover, the reverse is equally true. As a business expands, good management does not always equal good leadership. It is critical for owners of growing businesses to know which one they are best at doing, and hire people to take care of the other.

Indeed, according to Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, perhaps two of the most-respected names in business thought, leadership is doing the right things while management involves doing things right.

Said somewhat differently, leadership, or doing the right things, means setting a vision, choosing the best way to get there and ensuring everyone in an organisation is going in the same direction.
Management follows leadership. Once a direction is set, management, which is doing things right, assesses the objectives and declares, "Here's the best way to get there."

In the early stages of a business, an owner needs to be both leader and manager. But as the business grows, it becomes increasingly difficult for one person to both lead and manage. When articles are written about a once-promising company that fails, reasons cited usually include things such as a lack of adequate capital, unexpected competition or an entrepreneur's failure to delegate. These may well be contributing factors. In fact, often the underlying reason is that the owner was either too busy managing to lead or did not know how to manage their once-great idea to success.

One of Bill Gates great strengths is his ability to know when to turn an idea over to managers and let them run with it. This is an unusual talent for someone who began Windows in his garage and struck out on his own when Apple told him it didn't see a future in the idea. But early on in Microsoft's meteoric rise, Gates figured out what he most liked and was good at doing, and hired top-notch people to handle everything else.

Gates understood he needed to stick to advancing his broader vision for the business. Perhaps he knew this intuitively but possibly he changed his role because suddenly there were too many things happening with the company. The reason doesn't matter: What counts is that Gates decided to continue leading ensuring Microsoft kept doing the right thing while letting others deal with doing things right.

This astute understanding allows Gates to keep his vision alive.

Moreover, when he and his wife created their multi-billion dollar foundation, he continued to keep focused on their collective strengths. Shortly after opening its

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