Managerial Leadership: Why the Civilized World is Throwing the War against Terrorism

Part of understanding why the civilized world is throwing the war against terrorism is to realize that we have a shortage of leaders and a surplus of managers. We have allowed our countries to become overgrown by bureaucracies and business interests. Bureaucracies and corporations naturally require managers.

The real constituents of a Western politician have become his business allies and his tools the government bureaucracy. Where leaders looked to the great men of history, today's politicians look to the camera. They learn to say nothing extreme, to moderate their appearance and their rhetoric, to focus on management over leadership, to listen to everyone and promise everyone everything while selectively delivering on their promises.

We have become a civilization of consumers led by managers whose goals are to dole out government services to us while maintaining our approval rating. Government social program giveaways have become our "sales" and the country our Wal-Mart into which we constantly keep paying more and more of our income. We lack for leaders, but we have no shortage of managers ready to put their latest government program special on Social Security, Health Care or Environmentalism on "Sale".

As Western nations expanded into government as a service, the nanny state rose inflated by the endless government programs and the manager became the default form of politician.


What is the difference between a manager and a leader?

First let's define what a leader is. A leader examines a problem, defines a solution and fights to implement it leading from the front. Most world leaders however are only managers, national CEO's looking to keep the lid on the pot and everything from boiling over. They advocate old policies in the guise of the new.

When confronted with a problem, managers will keep pushing "company policy" or formulating consensus solutions, diverting criticism and looking for someone else to blame for the whole mess. Managers may sometimes posture as leaders, but like Olmert, Blair or Bush they often prove inadequate to the task.

Leaders are primary concerned with results and are often unpopular, managers are concerned with the popularity of the people they manage. It's the difference between Winston Churchill and Tony Blair or Theodore Roosevelt and George W. Bush. And much as many people would love to compare these men, they are fundamentally different.

Managers are acceptable enough in every day life, however in a crisis that requires daring steps and unpopular moves, managers are usually dead weight, restraining any "extreme moves" and advocating moderate steps taken in consensus with everyone else. And moderation in response to a crisis is often the next worst thing to doing nothing at all.

Managers and Leaders in the War on Terror

The nature of a leader is the ability to define public sentiment rather than bowing to it. This makes leaders dangerous because they can be undemocratic. A leader is not elected to fulfill a moderate agenda but to rescue a nation from a crisis and to define the way forward.

By contrast a manager looks to appease everyone and smooth out the rough edges. A manager's response to the War on Terror is to make a few piecemeal efforts at fighting terrorism while trying to somehow 'manage' the countries producing terrorism, offering incentives to some, threats to others and hoping to turn the whole thing around with a few conferences about the trouble spots in the region. Where a leader sees an enemy, a manager sees a management problem. But you can't 'manage' evil, you can only defeat it.

In Israel, managers like Barak, Netanyahu and Olmert have been trying for halfway solutions to the problem of the campaign for Israel's destruction. Nowhere is the futility of the manager's approach clearer than when seeing the IDF target a few terrorists and then go back home, leaving the remaining terrorists behind and then heading off for another peace conference.

Managers may sometimes talk like leaders, but they are psychologically incapable of taking the steps necessary to insure victory no matter how big they talk. In the American Civil War, General McClellan was a brilliant manager and utterly incapable of decisively destroying the enemy. His failure only dragged out the war, but as a manager he was psychologically incapable of doing what Grant and Sherman would go on to do, brutally and decisively take the war to the enemy.

The Breakdown

Managers seek consensus. Leaders take decisive steps.

Managers seek to avoid risk employing half-measures and safe solutions. Leaders embrace risk taking daring measures to achieve seemingly impossible outcomes.

Leaders reject compromise where that compromise taints or destroys what they are given to protect and defend. Managers prefer a compromise that serves as an incremental step toward stability.

Leaders know that security is an illusion and that the future is built on unilaterally expanding power and security. Managers seek to hold on to the temporary security above all else and see the future in consensus rather than in unilateral action.

Leaders want a decisive victory. Managers prefer a workable compromise. As long as we are led by managers the civilized world will continue throwing the war against terrorism. We need fewer managers and more leaders, more Roosevelts and less Blairs and McClellans. We don't just need rhetoric, but men whose lives and records show that they live that rhetoric and put their money where their mouth is.