Power
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The Chief of an organization is given just one mandate - exceed the target by 35% over last years turnover.

Such a mandate for a forward looking leader would mean that he will motivate his team and work towards increasing the market base and sell to more new customers to increase the volumes to generate the extra money to exceed the target.

On the other side the same mandate for a "bookish and myopic" leader would mean optimising the resources, downsizing, curbing and controlling expenditure. To meet such mandates, the leaders of such companies assume a lot of power to carry out their mission.

Grabbing unchecked power, regardless of the justifications, and doing an end-run around established due process is not leadership. There is absolutely no leadership in secretly deploying concentrated unaccountable power.

Baby-steps toward tyranny and totalitarianism are steps nonetheless. And they are especially frightening when they are totally unnecessary in light of generous legal provisions that provide the chief of any organization, the means to obtain the ends he wants anyway.

History the world over alerts us to the dangers of unchecked power. And starting down the slope to terrible abuses of power while mumbling good intentions makes the fall toward unabated, unstoppable, unaccountable power no less dangerous.

True leaders summon restraint — even when their conscience tells them that the temptation they feel is justifiable because it has its source in a well-intending sense of duty.

True leaders submit to the rules and laws which exist to protect everyone — even when that makes the job a little more burdensome.

Anything less is not leadership. It is authoritarianism. And dangerous.

This is a real time experience of what was created by participative style empowered management to what is presently happening under a power crazy tyro. 

Author : R Bharadwaj

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