A few months ago some of us attended a Speaker’s Series at the University of Toronto where the topic of discussion was “Leadership”.  When the speaker polled the audience of mostly recent grads for their opinion of “what is leadership?” they answered: “ability to build consensus”, “ability to inspire”, “ability to convince people to follow your vision”. What was not seen as leadership was “directing”, “making decisions”, or even “following standards”. These were not good attributes and they classified them as “Management”.

I found the information coming from the audience enlightening… and a little concerning.  I do agree that part of leadership is to find ways to inspire and “sell” a vision. But the other part of leadership also encompasses those “ugly” parts termed as management. There are times when a leader has to make the tough decisions nobody else wants to make, and even in some cases dictate “this is the way we are going.  Period”.

Many ERP projects run into problems precisely because the organization’s leadership waivers on directing and making the tough decisions.

Don’t get me wrong – I am all for new ideas and challenging the status quo. That is the only way to progress. But we cannot just throw away knowledge and experience. In the current environment, where a single data point becomes truth, we need to keep a balance between what we know works consistently and encouraging the new generation to challenge and improve.

We are not there yet.