Hi Amar,
The one thing that distinguishes leadership and management is the degree of vision. Leaders set the vision, which is made of core ideology and envisioned future, and the leader will then inspire the managers to achieve the mission by developing strategies that will accomplish the right thing that will propel the organization towards the envisioned future:
CORE IDEOLOGY
• Core values
• Core purpose
ENVISIONED FUTURE
• 10-30 Year BHAG
(Big, Hairy, and Audacious Goal )
• Vivid description
Managers who think they are leaders with values and purpose that are out of sync with the organizational ideology would spread dissension and become a nuisance. Effective managers will innovate ways of achieving the leader's mission. All can't be Gandhi jis, Richard Bransons or David Packards of the world. A manager's job is evaluated annually, while the leaders job is evaluated by history. There will be one leader for one organization over its long existence if the vision is purposeful and beneficial, while there will be many managers during the organization's life. Leaders are remembered and Managers are forgotten. This is the truth of the corporate world as there are only few people the world can acknowledge as true leaders, while there are millions of managers. How a leader inspires managers and employees can be seen from the words of David Packard (September 7, 1912 – March 26, 1996) who was a co-founder of Hewlett-Packard (1939), serving as president (1947–1964), CEO (1964–1968). He said the following in delivering an address aimed at employees of Hewlett Packard:
I want to discuss why a company exists in the first place. In other words, why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company's existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. As we investigate this, we inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so that they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately and make a contribution to society, a phrase that sounds trite, but is fundamental...... You can look around (in the general business world), and see people who are interested in money and nothing else, but the underlying drives come largely from a desire to do something else: to make a product, to give a service generally to do something which is of value.
Managers who think they're leaders cause more problems than solutions by working at cross-purposes trying to prove the leaders wrong. Managers can be developed but visionaries are born. A leader will envision a future that a manager can only see if he or she follows the leadership. The moment you do not share the leader's vision, a manager is doomed.