Most people view organizational change the same way they view a clown standing down the street from them.

It may be a positive experience, but we’d rather it be someone else’s positive experience.

Despite our best efforts, the world continues to change and grow. In order to remain competitive, organizations need change alongside their environment. Changing certain parts of an organization are easy, but changing people is hard.

Most people try to avoid the clown.

For over fifty years, organizations have looked for help in leading people through change. They relied on thought leaders and researchers for help making sense of the mental processes people use to understand and cope with their changing roles. These models can help people become more willing and able to embrace change. At any level in the organization, leaders will be involved in leading change.

So leaders must meet the clown.

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The Portable Guide to Management – LeaderLab Papers

Critics of followership say that “follower” suggests subservience. No doubt employees should take more ownership and be as proactive as Ira Chaleff’s “courageous followers.” But language matters, and followership is an unfortunate choice of words. To address this issue we need to see how followership rests on a confused notion of leadership. But, first, is there a better way to think of employees than as either followers or subordinates?

01.02 The Portable Guide to Leadership

Airport bookstores are crowded with books on leadership and each one seems to promote a “leadership lack.” They’ll each begin with phrases like “The most pressing issue in organizations is that leaders lack integrity…or empathy…or strategy…or even humor. These books continue by laying out the authors’ simple framework for developing the perfect leader. On and on the dialogue goes to the point where readers become be confused because the 21 Unassailable Edicts of Leadership are different than the Seven Routines of Really Efficient Leaders.  It would be a poor move to add to this confusion. With this in mind, we will admit that we do not believe our “leadership lack” to be the most pressing issue in organizations, just the easiest to fix: Leaders lack an understanding of leadership theory.

01.01 – Lead(or) Manage

A concise distinction between leadership and management is impossible. Instead, this eMonograph surveys an array of leadership experts to explore the differences between leadership and management in order to create a common, accepted understanding of the value, skills and nature of leadership in the workplace, and how leaders are clearly different from managers. Contributors to this eMonograph were asked to summarize their opinion on the difference between leadership and management in less than 200 words. The result is a quick, but informative survey of the major opinions on this oft-debated topic.