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It is doubtful that an organization of any size can be led by a single individual.

Good, or at least competent, leaders are required at all levels. In other words, there must be a strong management team.

There is a complementary and largely symbiotic relationship between a leader and the organization.

The stronger the organization, the better one’s assessment of those who hold high level appointments within it will be. They will seem to be performing well, because the organization itself is performing well.

However, the better those individuals perform as leaders, the greater the chance that the organization will perform well. In any case, for instance, it is always necessary to assemble a management team that includes a proper balance of:

• The technical ability to produce the service or product that the business sells;
• the entrepreneurial flair to adapt to changing circumstances and to exploit new opportunities by creating new process, products and services and identifying the desired return on investment and level of acceptable risk associated with each;
• the administrative ability to plan, organize and control group activity (including to maintain proper control over its financial requirements and expenditure process); and
• the ability to integrate the various aspects of business operations, including its internal affairs and relationship with its investors.

Only through a proper pooling of such talent will it be possible to unify, reconcile and balance organizational activity and focus it on settled activities and goals.

It is the primary responsibility of the chief executive officer to create such a management team. Complicating the formation of a properly balanced team is the fact that the ideal combination of such skills depends on the stage the business has reached in its own lifecycle, and the environmental conditions in which it must operate.

“It is easy to get good players,” said baseball manager Casey Stengel. “It’s getting them to play together that is the tough part.”

The ability to develop a strong management team draws on the fact that in certain respects an organization is a leadership training ground. The ultimate leader within every organization fills the post of principal instructor.

The leaders at lower levels (and, at least to some extent, even the rank and file) are the pupils. Providing training and support to lower-level managers and the opportunity to develop their management and leadership potential is important to those managers because it allows them to develop as leaders so that they can and will receive promotions someday.

However, providing that training also strengthens the organization itself. It is self-evident that a manager who knows what he or she is supposed to do would be able to do the management job better than someone who does not.

No organization can afford to live only in the hope that those who are appointed to management positions will inherently know or fortuitously discover what they are supposed to do.

At the apex of the organization structure, the ultimate success of any plan will turn upon the extent to which the most senior manager has recruited a supportive body of immediate subordinates who are firmly committed to the implementation of the plan and the accomplishment of the defined mission, and who are capable of acting independently in moving the organization along.

Organizational success depends upon unity of effort, which in turn depends upon unity of command.

Ultimately, a single decision-making body must direct and co-ordinate the action of all members of the organization and the use and deployment of all of its resources.

Unity of command does not preclude efforts to achieve consensus, and it certainly does not necessarily require that one leader dominate all other members of the management group.

However, where a more collegial approach is taken to management it must be understood that all members of the management team must stand behind decisions once they are made.

Stephen Bauld is a government procurement expert and can be reached at swbauld@purchasingci.com. Some of his columns may contain excerpts from The Municipal Procurement Handbook published by Butterworths.