RULE 71

Don’t stagnate

So are you a leader or a manager? Not really a fair question when we’ve spent the whole book so far making sure you are an effective, efficient and startlingly good manager. But the really good managers are also leaders – they inspire and motivate, encourage and enthuse. They draw people to them like moths to a flame. They are charismatic and dynamic and stylish. They are leaders indeed.

But they are also good managers. Too much management and you stagnate. You have to revel in change, seek new challenges, stay on your toes, find new ways of doing things, motivate your team in new and exciting ways, introduce new technology and ideas, start trends, jump fences, light fires. You can’t be seen to stand still or moss will grow over you and you become a fixture and people stop noticing you.

I know it’s difficult sometimes to see beyond today’s workload, tomorrow’s meetings, next week’s directors’ report. But you have to be moving or you will stagnate. Set aside a little time each day or week – only half an hour perhaps – to think up new ways of being revolutionary. Why? Because if you don’t do this you become bogged down in the day-to-day, the humdrum, the -routine. Yes, you are a manager, but you are also an innovator, motivator, inspirer, leader, trendsetter.

If the moss has already grown over you and people have come to regard you as part of the furniture you will have to work very hard to shake off that image. Don’t scare them with radical change – do it bit by bit.