MGT 424 Module 1 What Leadership Is Example

Keeping the Docks Running Is Not the Same as Deciding Where the Marina Goes: Leadership and Management in a Family Business

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Business Administration Program, Aspen University

MGT 424: Leadership

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Month Day, Year

Keeping the Docks Running Is Not the Same as Deciding Where the Marina Goes: Leadership and Management in a Family Business

Little Traverse Marina, a composite family business in Harbor Springs, Michigan, rents 240 boat slips, stores about 300 boats over the winter and runs a service shop. It employs 9 people year-round and about 26 in summer. Last spring, the founders' daughter became general manager after six years handling the marina's accounts. Her first season went well by every usual measure: slips were full, revenue rose 6% and the service shop finished winter work on time. Yet the business faces changes no one has addressed. Slip holders are aging, younger boaters want rentals and memberships rather than ownership, electric boats need charging that the docks cannot supply and a waiting list of 140 names suggests demand the marina is not serving. This paper asks whether the new general manager is leading as well as managing.

Defining Leadership

Scholars define leadership in many ways, but most definitions share an element of influence toward a shared purpose. Kotter (1990) offered a practical definition by contrast. In his account, management exists to keep a complex organization running in an orderly, predictable way. It plans and budgets, organizes and staffs, and controls and solves problems. Leadership exists to help an organization move in a new direction. It sets direction through a vision and strategies, aligns people by communicating that direction to everyone whose cooperation is needed, and motivates and inspires people to keep going when obstacles appear. Kotter argued that both are necessary and that most organizations are overmanaged and underled.

A Different Orientation

Zaleznik (1977) went further, suggesting that managers and leaders tend to be different kinds of people. In his view, people suited to managing see goals as arising from necessity, treat work as a process of balancing interests and seek order in their relationships, while people suited to leading pursue goals that come from personal ideas, are willing to stir up uncertainty to try new approaches and form intense relationships. Later scholars have questioned whether the two orientations belong to different people, but the contrast is useful for noticing which way a person leans.

Sorting the Season

Why She Leans Toward Managing

Her background explains part of the pattern. Six years in accounting rewarded accuracy, control and predictable results, the habits of Zaleznik's managers. Her father, who still owns the marina, rarely discussed the future with staff, so there was no model of direction-setting to follow. And the season's urgent problems, from the dock fault to staffing, crowded out questions that had no deadline.

How Leadership Develops

Day (2000) distinguished two kinds of development. Leader development builds an individual's knowledge, skills and self-awareness, the human capital of one person. Leadership development builds the relationships, trust and shared commitment among people that allow a group to lead together, a form of social capital. Day argued that organizations often invest only in the first. For the marina, the second matters as much: direction will not hold unless the dock crew, service technicians and long-time slip holders help shape it.

What Leading Would Look Like Here

Setting direction would mean deciding what the marina should be in five years: whether to add charging stations, whether to start a boat club that rents boats to members, how to serve the waiting list and how to keep long-time slip holders as the mix changes. Aligning people would mean explaining that direction to staff, slip holders, the town harbor commission and her parents. Motivating would mean connecting the changes to what staff and boaters value, such as keeping a family marina on the bay when larger operators are buying others.

Keeping the Management Strong

Kotter warned that strong leadership paired with weak management can be as damaging as the reverse, producing exciting plans that never get carried out. The marina's reliable operations are an asset, and slip holders return partly because things work. Leading should be added, not substituted. The work order system, the staffing plan and the budget she built this year will keep running, and her move toward direction-setting depends on them, since a manager whose docks are failing has no time to think about the future.

The Owners' Part

Her parents still own the marina, and any new direction needs their agreement. Zaleznik's portrait of leaders as people willing to disturb settled arrangements applies awkwardly to a daughter proposing changes to her father's business. She will present the direction as a set of options with costs, invite her parents to the winter meetings and ask her father to describe what he would have done differently, honoring the history while opening the future.

A Plan for Next Season

Over the winter, she will hold three evening meetings with year-round staff and a group of slip holders to discuss the marina's future, review what other marinas on the lakes have done and visit one that has started a boat club. By March, she will write a one-page direction for the next five years and share it with all staff before the season opens. She will set aside one morning each week in summer for work on the direction, protected from daily problems by a dock supervisor who handles routine issues.

Measuring Progress

Progress will show in whether a direction exists by spring, whether staff can describe it in their own words by midsummer and whether the first steps, such as a charging pilot or a club trial, begin within a year.

Conclusion

Little Traverse Marina is well managed. Kotter's distinction shows that its new general manager has done the work of managing thoroughly and the work of leading hardly at all, and Zaleznik's contrast helps explain why. Day's view of leadership as shared relationships suggests that the path forward is not to become a different person but to set direction with the people who will carry it out.

References

Day, D. V. (2000). Leadership development: A review in context. The Leadership Quarterly, 11(4), 581-613. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1048-9843(00)00061-8

Kotter, J. P. (1990). What leaders really do. Harvard Business Review, 68(3), 103-111.

Zaleznik, A. (1977). Managers and leaders: Are they different? Harvard Business Review, 55(3), 67-78.