Reformer Vs. Leader or Manager

One of the main issues regarding leadership and management, at least with me, is that I had a problem with all the discrepancies that I saw in my company as compared to what I was reading in all those leadership books. For example, where I work, there is little listening to the customer. As odd as it may sound, believe me, it makes sense if you look at it in light of one of my favorite saying, “every organization is perfectly aligned to get the results that it is getting.”

Anyway, I was raising hell in all the meetings that I attended and causing stress to everyone with such comments as, “We are not customer focused” and “There is little accountability being practiced in this department”, and my all time favorite, “Our managers incompetent”. Of course, not all of them were in formal meetings, but I had no problem keeping my mouth shut.

Then I remembered one of Covey’s remarks which was somewhere along the line of “All companies, even the best of them, have many problems, some even deep”, so, I thought, it is inevitable; there will always be problems. I started to realize that a person has to work with what he’s got, and not compare his reality to abstract thoughts that are basically meant as guidelines. Being a teacher, I know that a great teacher is not one that has students that get As or Bs (cause they could be A or B students from the very beginning), but rather the he is the one that improves his students to the best of their potential and get the best possible results from what he has to work with.

Hence, I started to think that the term Reformer is better than leader in the sense that it highlights the importance of amendment and improvement as it relates your current situation not to an abstract reference like the one that I read in those management books.

Of course, this is not to say that these books are in anyway useless, on the contrary, they are essential as they guide you through your reformation of your organization; it only underscores the importance of realizing that it’s not a perfect world out there.

One of the books that I recommend, is Execution which highlights the importance of realizing that things don’t get done by themselves (delegation is not enough); you have to effect the discipline of execution for things to materialize; like I said, it's not a perfect world out there.

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