The Idea-Driven Organization

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A Different Kind of Leadership

MORE THAN A quarter century ago, Professor Fred Luthans of the University of Nebraska published an intriguing study that found a significant difference between how “successful” managers (those who got promoted rapidly) and “effective” managers (those whose units performed well) spent their time.¹ The managers who were promoted rapidly spent much more time networking and politicking, while their more effective colleagues spent their time building their units and developing their people. In short, Luthans found that organizations were promoting the wrong types of managers. And because the managers who got promoted the fastest were also the ones who ended up in top leadership positions, Luthans’s study was an implicit ...