Lead people; manage things

Leadership and management are different crafts. You lead people through character and values; you manage things through skills and systems. Held in balance, the tension between them is what carries the load.

Lead people; manage things. It sounds like a slogan. It is the load-bearing distinction of the whole method. Leading is influencing beliefs and behaviour — through character and values, and through the craft of change; you lead people. Managing is making sure the right things get done, the right way, at the right time; you manage things — a plan to an outcome. The seven Questions of Leadership sit on the people-and-change side. The five Questions of Management sit on the things-and-execution side. They are the right and left hands of a functioning organisation.

Picture a suspension bridge. It carries enormous weight, and it stays stable, because the forces inside it are in tension and in balance. Pull the cables too tight on one side, or let them go slack, and the bridge fails. A business is the same. The tension between executing today and leading toward tomorrow is not a problem to remove — it is the thing holding the structure up. Balanced, the tension is productive: you hit this quarter's plan while building next year's business.