Is this the most important principle of all?
The federal government becomes more oppressive every day.
We are members of an organization dedicated to ending that oppression.
We know that change is coming, that we are on the side of history, and yet it is frustrating that so many people complain and yet do not actively assist in this necessary transformation.
The following paragraph about what certain effective leaders have in common tells a vital secret we should all take to heart, that leadership (and we are all both leaders and followers) requires a higher level of management than of vision. An organization is a living thing with goals that evolve and sometimes conflict. Leaders must harmonize and clarify goals, but leaders do not supply the vision.
The real task of leadership is to manage: to allow an organization to build itself by helping organize, systematize, routinize and choose.
South Carolina League is destined to achieve its goals because it doesn’t rely on charismatic showmen or elaborate marketing campaigns (we wouldn’t turn them down, though), rather it relies on being in sinc with history.
What we do extremely well, is build, organize, repeat, reassess, grow and harmonize.
We know that are not in conflict with other South Carolinians. We simply see a way out of the grinding crisis that weighs on all our minds. One by one each of us come to realize that a way is open to us all.
Are we really just seeing further down the road?
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What great leaders did.
What they did do, is understand the movement they stepped in front of, and managed its course and development, assisting it to realize its aims. They created nothing out of raw cloth, as is so often imputed to “great” individual leaders; they successfully managed the right causes – already highly developed in and of themselves. That’s great enough.
Modern executives should abandon the destructive idea that they are or must be the font of all creativity and leadership in their organizations. They should seek the movements and trends that point to the future of their organizations from within the staff, competitors, vendors, consumers, and the general political and social environment as it affects their organization, and they should formulate that into a “vision” which they then manage. They will be much more effective for it.
Perhaps, one day, they’ll even be remembered as great leaders! That sometimes happens to those who most distance themselves from that specific effort, focusing on being good managers, instead.
Read the whole thing (with apologies for Lincoln) What really makes for greatness in political, military, or business executives? | Managing Leadership
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