Leading

With any job, there is a balance of managing and leading.  One of the challenges (and joys for those who like it) is to consistently ask the question "is there a better way?" or even more challenging, "are we doing the right thing?"

For me this transition is still very difficult.  I find that each new opportunity or suggestion that gets raised, I think "will it work?", instead of "why not?".  And the less I am willing to test the status quo, the less that my people will want to bring up new opportunities to me.  I think this is a directly correlated to my working experience in IT and project management.  It's about hitting the goal that is designated, it is about managing what we have (this is especially so in a corporate IT environment).

I do enjoy the people interactions of being a leader, to shape a team.  Although that can be done as a manager.  The difference is in the "inspiring" part of the people interaction.  Talking to a friend who also was leading a business unit, he told me his stress of trying to meet sales targets, whilst enjoying the process of building a team. 

Would I still be willing to be a leader if it was under different circumstances?  If I didn't have this current reporting structure?  Would I be as driven to results as I currently am?  I think not.  Would that make the company not as "lean and mean"? I think also unlikely.  To be a leader, one must be willing to really be hungry for a goal, to shape everyone else to follow it.  The easiest thing to be hungry for is the money.  Since I don't have that type of hunger, I need to find something else.   A cause, possibly?