Manager & Leader
Kotter's distinction splits administering complexity (managing) from coping with change (leading), so a leader can see exactly where their week is over-indexed and where it's empty.
Two blocks of time sit side by side, one filled with routine administration and the other with the work of change.
Reach for this when…
- A newly promoted manager is drowning in admin while the team has no sense of direction.
- Someone is excellent operationally and effectively invisible as a leader.
- A team asks 'where are we going' more often than 'what should I do next'.
How to run it
- Introduce the distinction: managers administer complexity (planning, organising, controlling), leaders cope with change (setting direction, aligning people, motivating).
- Have them map their current activities against the two.
- Identify where they're over-indexed on one and under-indexed on the other.
- Design specific shifts in time allocation and behaviour.
A worked example
Situation. Moussa Diop was made creative director at Baobab Creative, a marketing agency in Dakar, Senegal, and spent his first quarter entirely on schedules, budgets, and client reports.
Applied. Mapping his week against the distinction showed over ninety per cent management activity and almost none of it spent setting direction or aligning the team around why the agency's new positioning mattered. He redesigned his calendar to protect two hours a week purely for talking to the team about where the work was heading, not what was due.
Result. By the next quarter, junior creatives could explain the new positioning in their own words - something none of them could do before.
The catch
The distinction gets used to elevate 'leading' and quietly demean 'managing', but a team with nobody administering the complexity collapses just as fast as one with no direction. The two aren't a hierarchy - they're both required, in different proportions depending on the role.
If you use this framework to excuse neglecting the operational basics, you haven't found your inner leader, you've just stopped doing half your job.
Origin: John Kotter ('What Leaders Really Do', HBR, 1990; A Force for Change)