Companies need both innovation and maintenance

Leadership Insight: A business requires both managers who invest and managers who maintain.

Managers primarily seek to maintain the status quo. The typical manager runs the daily operations for her team, equips her team to accomplish the company’s goals, and aspires to be a senior manager by skill and seniority. For this reason, managers prefer to lead those who have no aspiration of leadership, because those who aspire to more can be disruptive, opinionated, and possibly competition for the senior management slots. Managers want to lead followers.

Those managers who keep the business operational are like joists in a multi-story building. They distribute the weight of upper stories across the foundation and are an integral part of the structure. Without them, the floors would collapse, but they aren’t responsible for the height of a building. A business with only these leaders never reaches two-stories.

Managers with a longer perspective than the daily operations aren’t satisfied with the status quo. These managers search out the next potential leaders and put their best efforts towards lifting up these leaders. They do not fear competition or disruption because they see the process as an investment in a future that extends beyond their lives.

These managers who invest in leaders are like columns. The upward rise of the structure depends on their presence, and the higher a building is, the stronger its columns must be. A business with only these leaders may reach high, but it has no breadth - it’s an obelisk.

Maxwell’s Law of Explosive Growth might indicate that all leaders ought to invest only in the top 20% of their followers; those who have leadership potential. In a way, Maxwell only repeats the underlying Pareto principle: 80% of one’s impact occurs from only 20% of one’s activity. While business managers might benefit from prioritizing their efforts towards the 20%, Maxwell’s law minimizes the integral part of the 80% as the backbone of the business. It is important for managers to lead all of their employees with love, even while they put additional investment in the most promising, and not to overlook the genuine followers in a desire for explosive growth. The Pareto principle may apply in this way also: 20% of the managers are likely to generate 80% of the growth, while the 80% keep the business afloat.

My ambition is piqued by Maxwell’s vision of a leader of leaders ((Maxwell)). There are enough examples, Jesus being chief, that I’m convinced that the principle is accurate, but I worry that the Law of Explosive Growth, taken by itself and not after nineteen other laws, (including the Law of Sacrifice) can easily be used as an excuse to neglect followers who don’t show the potential that a leader of leaders searches for. Maybe this is exactly what Maxwell suggests, that it is necessary to pass over many to find the few, but I don’t think he means for the investment in leaders to eclipse the care that a leader takes for all her followers. Jesus was selective with the apostles he chose and made his decision after a night of communion with the Father, but his ministry to the poor did not cease in order that he might spend 100% of his efforts investing in the apostles. This principle must be applied in moderation, with only a emphasis on leadership investment rather than a replacement of all other investments, and that’s why my application will be to examine the time investment I make with my coworkers and take a small step this week to put more time into those with the greatest leadership potential.

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