Wrong Jungle! Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly effective People

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success. Leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

 

You can quickly grasp the important difference between the two if you envision a group of producers cutting their way through the jungle with machetes.  They're the producers, the problem solvers. They're cutting through the undergrowth, clearing it out.

 

The managers are behind them, sharpening their machetes, writing policy and procedure manuals, holding muscle development programs bringing in improved technologies and setting up working schedules and compensation programs for machete wielders.

 

The leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, "Wrong jungle!"

 

But how do the busy, efficient producers and managers often respond? "Shut up! We're making progress."

 

As individuals, groups, and businesses, we're often so busy cutting through the undergrowth we don't even realize we're in the wrong jungle. And the rapidly changing environment in which we live makes effective leadership more critical than it has ever been---in every aspect of independent and interdependent life.

 

We're more in need of a vision or destination and a compass (a set of principles or directions) and less in need of a road map. We often don't know what the terrain ahead will be like or what we will need to go through it; much will depend on our judgment at the time. But an inner compass will always give us direction.

 

Effectiveness---often even survival---does not depend solely on how much effort we expend, but on whether or not the effort we expend is in the right jungle. And the metamorphosis taking place in most every industry and profession demands leadership first and management second.

 

In business, the market is changing so rapidly that many products and services that successfully met consumer tastes and needs a few years ago are obsolete today. Proactive powerful leadership must constantly monitor environmental change, particularly customer buying habits and motives, and provide the force necessary to organize resources in the right direction.

 

Efficient management without effective leadership is, as one individual has phrased it, "like straightening deck chairs on the Titanic." No management success can compensate for failure in leadership. But leadership is hard because we're often caught in a management paradigm.

 

I'm convinced that too often parents are also trapped in the management paradigm, thinking of control, efficiency, and rules instead of direction, purpose, and family feeling.

 

And leadership is even more lacking in our personal lives. We're into managing with efficiency, setting and achieving goals before we have even clarified our values.