Managers Vs Leaders: Blurring lines or sharpening chasms?

The old and hackneyed topic had been reiterated by our worthy MBA professors all across India numerous times. But still, I haven’t to date found a perfect, or even close to perfectly logical definitions of the two in the context of present changing business environment.
MBA’s are typically trained to be managers. Managers are people who judiciously allocate meager resources (human, financial, marketing, raw material etc) for better productivity and hence profitability (text book definition from 1st trimester!). On the other hand, leaders are people providing a guiding light to the organization as a whole. I had once a lively discussion with one of my professors regarding this only. While I was arguing that Winston Churchill was a leader and Chamberlain a manager, he refused to put the things down in such stark black and white contexts. Me, with my I-am-in-first year MBA-trimester brashness, just nodded my head in disapproval and settled with a self satisfied grin of having stirred a debate among the class.
But today, I think the prof to be right. Things can’t be put in such stark binary figures. Look at today’s corporate culture. Leaders like Mr. Ratan Tata, Mr. Steve Jobs, Mr. Carlos Ghoshn and countless other Indian business Maharajas, prove time and again their visionary leadership and guts to achieve the impossible. But they have been managers at some point of their lives. So does that means that they cease to be managers now, with the ‘post’ of a Leader being bestowed upon them? I offer my logic against it and try to forge a hypothesis of my own (blame it on my MBA degree, but I have developed a habit to standardize things!!).
The view I prefer is of a change in roles rather than positions which define a manager and a leader in corporate terms. In today’s changing and fast moving economy, leadership is exemplified in various strata’s of the corporate hierarchy. What do we call a Product Manager of a growing FMCG MNC in India who takes entrepreneurial decisions to fend off competitions by engaging in price wars all by himself for a quarter or two? Or how do we define the ‘managerial’ role of a HR manager of a Pharma company in India, who takes her employees on a ‘motivational’ and ‘team building’ exercise to Shivpuri (a famous adventure getaway of Uttrakhand all by herself and informing her superiors later on? Such cases of Intrapreneurial ventures are being recognized by Top Shots of corporate world as essential to survive in an increasingly uncertain global economy.
I take a third example of IBM. We all know how the Big Blue of the past had managed to regain its once lost status as a Global Behemoth. Without getting into much detail, it is a classic story of hiving off noon core businesses and thinking as a Global company, rather than an American MNC. An important credit of its revival goes to its captive unit in India and its second largest R&D unit in Bangalore outside US. IBM nurtured its human resources and talent right from the start. I have read about the legendary freedom and innovative latitude allowed to the employees at its Bangalore center. The cases of individual leadership displayed by the employees are nothing short of Jack Welch or Lee Iacocca may be only lesser in magnitude.
Indian corporate houses too seem to have identified this culture. What with Marico and MindTree making headlines as one of the most coveted employers. MindTree is especially famous for giving freedom to an employee and display leadership in various domains. No one can afford to lag behind in these times of quality management talent crunch. And it seems to have become a common interview question of various corporate coming for B school Campus Recruitments al across the premier and respected B schools of India. Moreover, many companies management trainee program has begun to be called as Young Leader program (eg Bharti’s).
So, manager vs leader is no longer a debate, according to me. Both are desired traits for corporate success. While managing things is a perennially desired trait from executive level onwards in the corporate world, leadership is what required from managers who are getting more and more positions of responsibility in their respective verticals. Leadership grooming the managers has become the primary pitch of leading Business schools of the world like Harvard and Wharton for their Executive MBA programs. As complexity increase around the globe, the traditional typical organization structure of an American CEO commanding its Asia Pacific and Mediterranean divisions with panache will soon become a thing of past, if not already at many corporations!
My advice to young managers is to develop a leadership trait on their own. Many are born with it, but it can also be acquired through conscious effort. Unlike in past, there is no lack of information or equal opportunity playing fields for you. Try to inculcate risk taking appetite in your activities, however small they may be in magnitude (like organizing class party or taking the lead in coordinating with your case study group to make a presentation on Sales Management). More on this part later on sometime.
To sum it up, Indian corporate sector is moving towards fully professional setups and in the wake of a strong competition from MNC’s trying to capitalize on the Indian growth story and smaller local players cutting teeth and growing confidence to take on the world, it is becoming increasingly necessary for overall corporate sector to retain best talent. My OB (Organization Behavior) Prof of first trimester often used to say that next corporate battlefield will not be technology, best practices or finances, but over Talent acquisition. And this is very evident in today’s world. With leadership roles and freedom being provided at one organization, quality talent will certainly like to flee the archaic culture of his/her present work environment. But sadly, present MBA education, though doing a good job at imparting the best practices and other functional domain expertise, is severely lacking in inculcating leadership as an institutionalized effort. I strongly hope that things get better sooner for seeing my country on the development path rising and fulfilling of Indian 2020 vision of rev. A P J Kalam fulfilled at least from the Corporate India side!