Doing the Right Thing

I ran across this quote this week and it hit home:

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

Peter Drucker
American (Austrian-born) management writer (1909 - 2005)
(from http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26536.html)

You are probably asking why this hit home and that is simply because too often as managers we are forced by the situation to do what is expedient rather than what is right. Sometimes it is polities, sometimes time constraints, and sometimes it is the path of least resistance. When that happens everyone looses although it may not be obvious and it may or may not come back to 'haunt' you.

Doing the right thing can also be difficult to determine at times because what is right for one part of the organization may not appear to be right for another part but if you take the time you should be able to determine the better right.