Engaging and not engaging with the big issues in records management

I've just read a really interesting paper about how people split off the concepts of leadership and management to avoid dealing with the anxiety of the big issues posed by either running a good organisational administration, or dealing with how the administration orients itself to the world.

The quick summary is that people like to believe in heroic leadership - because it means that they don't have to deal with the administrative issues of how work gets done, they just have to follow the bureaucracy ignoring/busting leader.

People also like to engage in managerialism - the focus on management and administrative technique to the exclusion of all else - whether it's creating the right results or not because it means that they don't have to deal with the hard issues of direction, mission etc.

The overarching theme of the paper is that you can’t really separate leadership and management if you want to be effective. Separating them performs a psychological function of managing anxiety. When we separate them we don’t have to simultaneously fight battles to set direction AND get an effective administration built around that direction.

What it's got me thinking about, is what are the issues we're not dealing with?

Where are we ignoring the tools of management because getting to an effective administration is too hard?

Where are we ignoring the tools of leadership - because fighting to set a new direction is too hard?