The document discusses several common oversimplified approaches to organizational problems and leadership. It argues these "quick fixes" actually add costs by leading to continual reorganizations that damage employee morale. It also differentiates between management and leadership, describing management as accountability for a team's output and building effectiveness. Leadership is setting a direction and getting others to commit to it competently. Having the right level of management is important so roles aren't too complex. Competence in a role, rather than behaviors, often drives whether others view someone as a leader.

1. The Demystification of Leadership
Mike Cardus
www.create-learning.com
www.create-learning.com - Michael Cardus

2. Quick fixes to organizational problems:
•“New Age…the hierarchy will topple with this new e-
generation”
•Everyone acts “autonomously” doing what is right and
everyone cooperates, without being clear of who is accountable
or for what.
•Matrix Based Organizations
•The walk about and everything will work out
•Be like the Japanese
•Be excellent; go from good to great; all in under a minute;
while looking for your cheese; on your iceberg.
•“We need more leaders and less managers”
We can all agree that it is good to be innovative, creative, and successful.
The question is how to create the conditions to make it possible to be so.
www.create-learning.com - Michael Cardus

3. The application of overly simplified solutions
adds cost in 2 ways:
•First, it leads to continual reorganizations and
changes.
•Second, the repeated changes attack the
morale of your people and increases their
change resistance.
www.create-learning.com - Michael Cardus

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5. Manager: A person in a role in which he or she is held
accountable not only for his/her personal effectiveness but also
for the output of others; and is accountable for building and
sustaining an effective team of subordinates capable of
producing those outputs, and for exercising effective leadership.
(Jaques 1998)
Leadership: That process in which one person sets the purpose
or direction for one or more other persons, and gets them to
move along together with him or her in that direction with
competence and full commitment. (Jaques 1994)
Leadership is not a free-standing activity: it is one function, among many that
occurs is some but not all roles.
www.create-learning.com - Michael Cardus

6. Managerial
Pastoral
Familiar
Leadership
Sports Team
Club
Volunteer
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9. The importance of having a “Big Enough” Manager’
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13. How big is your bucket (how complex is the role)?
What is the time-span of the longest goal to be completed?
Who is BEST to fill the bucket (who has the requisite CAC)?
How do you know?
Success will only
move as high as
the ability to
handle complexity
of the individual
managing the
work / staff.
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15. Complexity Based Upon Time-Span Management
2 to 5 Years
1 to 2 Years
3 Months to 1 Year
1 day to 3 Months
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17. It is an almost universal disease of
bureaucratic systems that have too many
levels of organization. - Elliott Jaques
What is hell is a
‘Deputy-Associate Vice President’?
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19.  Employees skipping the chain-of-command. By-passing their assigned direct manager because of
excessively long lines of management.
 Uncertainty as too where your manager actually sits on the org chart. Do you really report to your
direct manager, or the one above them? Or even the one above them?
 Managers uncertainty as too where their subordinates actually sit on the org chart? Are you
accountable for the output of the staff directly below you, or the ones below them as well?
 Excessive paper / email / voice mail passing up and down too many levels – red tape worms.
 Tight Coupling of Manager to employee
 Feeling that subordinates and management are too close in authority, accountability and work; as
shown on the org chart.
 Feeling of organizational clutter;
 Managers “looking over the shoulders / breathing down the necks” of subordinates;
 Too many levels involved in any problem and process;
 Too much interference in just getting work done;
 Not being allowed to do the work at hand
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21. When we have someone who is competent in their role and has the
proper organizational system to allow them to work to their
capacity and be supported in their work two things happen.
1.People are happy to follow along together
2. From the feeling that they actually want to follow arises another
feeling; that the person is endowed with certain great personal
leadership qualities.
In other words…with the right organizational circumstances where
a person who is competent in their role with leadership
accountability, people progress together; the progression together
touches the deep-seated value for social cohesion. We become
suffused by warm feelings that we tend to associate, incorrectly,
with behavioral traits in leaders rather than with effective
competence.
www.create-learning.com - Michael Cardus

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23. Images in order of appearance:
Elliot Jaques: Executive Leadership
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kwl/4743024076/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/home_of_chaos/4829767069/
http://create-learning.com/blog/team-building/management-vs-leadership-like-two-
unicorns-sexting
http://create-learning.com/blog/team-building/competency-in-work-drives-observed-
behaviors
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidw/2063575447/
http://create-learning.com/blog/manager-training/the-difference-is-the-point-of-
interaction
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deks/
www.create-learning.com - Michael Cardus