Lack of viable leaders reason behind struggling private, public companies

Real challenge facing firms is how to combine leadership and management skills

LAHORE: In Pakistan it is not uncommon to hear that a senior manager has lost his job due to a lack of leadership skills.

Many a times, despite possessing idle professional qualifications, managers are often times unable to work in group settings. And instead of stimulating their employees they alienate them through autocratic behaviour.

Leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. The real challenge is to combine leadership and management skills and use each to balance the other.

Management is all about coping with complexities; it aims to bring a degree of order and consistency in the organisation’s day-to-day operations.

Leadership, on the other hand, is all about coping with change to transform the organisation to become more competitive than ever in view of faster technological change, changing demographics of the workforce, uncertain external environment.

Though there are a few cases where manager and leaders in Pakistan have done exceptionally well in the corporate world, but unfortunately such cases are few.

In Pakistan we have executives who are over-educated in management and under-educated in leadership. In our organisations, particularly in state owned enterprises, we are over managed and under-led as generally we do not embrace long-term planning as a panacea for our lack of direction and our inability to adapt to an increasingly competitive business environment.

While there is no easy prescription to turn around our economy overnight through revamping our economic machineries, we have to rise above parochial loyalties in giving the reigns of our institutions in the hands of very capable manager- leaders.

Presently, our public sector organisations look like rabbits caught in the headlight as they have no direction.

In a few cases where there is some direction they are traveling at a leisurely place to nowhere. This is wrecking the country’s economy with devastating consequences.

Under the circumstances the role of the top management in our organisations has become very critical.

The nation is already suffering from stagnating economy and rampaging inflation failing to create fiscal space to spend on education, health care and other basic amenities.

At this juncture, it has become imperative to do everything possible to bring technological and intellectual advancement.

This underlines the importance of leadership to run our institutions most efficiently to boost the economy and get full benefits of the government’s various initiatives. China Pakistan Economic Corridor will succeed only if we have competent leaders to execute various projects at all levels. In the current scenario our organisations are facing challenges in markets, customers, competition and technology around the globe.

Therefore, industry leaders have to clarify their values, develop new strategies, and change new ways of running the business.

The toughest challenge in running our institutions efficiently is mobilising and inspiring people to get them fully involved in discharging their duties.

How to ensure that the employees embrace the new challenges is the role of the leadership in the organisations. They need to exercise vision, energy, authority and strategic direction to lead effectively and navigate the organisation to successes.

The writer is former Senior Executive Vice President & Group Chief, Human Resources & Organisational Development in National Bank of Pakistan

Published in The Express Tribune, January 30^th, 2017.

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