A business become successful only when it balances two essential factors seamlessly, a good leadership and an effective management system. Most companies often confuse both the terms, while some others think that they are the same. This confusion may be attributed to the fall down of certain enterprises wherein people confuse the approaches and applications between distinct enterprises.
Leadership and strategic management skills are essential components of any organization or business, and can be achieved with the help of a chosen leader and proper support from his/her personnel. While good leadership would take practice and experience to implement properly, strategic management is best perfected via courses. And while good leaders are born, an effective strategic management system is achieved by consulting with management consultants.
Leadership can be defined as an individual’s effort to guide the company to the goal that his/her group has agreed upon. The goal is set after understanding individual abilities, visions and goals. It is often the leadership skills of a successful manager that guide the entire organization towards a unified goal, while taking into consideration the factors mentioned above. A good leadership is required for effective strategic planning and management which in turn would assist the former in attaining long term success.
Strategic management deals with the planning and execution of various operations and projects within the organization, directing the practices and procedures, maximizing benefits while minimizing costs, establishing appropriate controls and motivating the subordinates etc. While leadership would lead to long term success, strategic management deals with the effective implementation and success of current activities. As such, the workload of the management team would be heavier than that of the leader.
A good leader would act as a spearhead, pointing the group in a unified direction. Once the direction is established, a good manager would take over the process of making the group maintain consistency till the end goals are reached. While a manager would go by the decisions mentioned in the book of ethics, a leader would be more radical and would make decisions based in his/her intuition.
In spite of these striking differences, the truth is that an organization cannot survive with only one of these elements. While a management without leadership would not achieve significant results at all (there would be no goal to follow and no one to lead you there), a leader without a management would result only in short term happiness (the business would start to fall as rapidly as it rises).
