Free The Facts of Business Life by Bill McBean

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Leadership at Level 4
    In their book, The Leadership Challenge (Jossey-Bass, 2002), James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner say that leaders “imagine what is possible,” and quote one owner as saying, “I’m my organization’s futures department.” This pretty much nails the definition of leadership at Level 4. More than at any other time in the life cycle of a business, at this level an owner has to look toward the future and focus the company on operating on an above-average level. This is accomplished essentially by overcoming apathy, continuing to gain market share and increasing profits through expansion, buying up competitors, finding a competitive advantage, or a combination of these.
Management at Level 4
    I said earlier, in the discussion of Level 3, that management is the daily blocking and tackling that must take place in order for a business to achieve the owner’s success goal, and that is equally true at Level 4. It is also true that in every decision management makes, financial performance and customers must continue to be your main focal points. The best way to make sure that happens is to keep the following six questions in mind:
    1 . How can we keep the customers we have and attract new ones?
    2 . How can we be more profitable, and how will we reinvest these profits to make us even better?
    3 . Is our product at least as good as our top competitors’, and how can we make it better?
    4 . What processes do we need to improve, and how can we improve them?
    5 . How can we improve the caliber of our employees?
    6 . What are our competitors doing, and how can we develop both defensive and offensive strategies to deal with their tactics?
    Being able to answer these questions and act on those answers requires you to have two overriding traits: you must be proactive and competitive. If you are not proactive at this level, you will be constantly fixing problems rather than anticipating them and limiting their effects. And if you don’t maintain your competitive spirit, your company’s forward momentum will stall. Of course, even if you consistently exhibit both of these traits, it’s essential that your key employees do as well. You can’t do it all yourself. Though you may succeed for a while, over time it’s the leaders within your company who will have to carry the flag. You can help bring this about by demonstrating these traits yourself, as well as by motivating the leaders to embrace the competitive will and demand it of themselves and their staff.
Planning and People at Level 4
    To be fair, a business can’t be running at full throttle all the time, so putting your company into a holding pattern from time to time is not only advisable, it’s necessary. You and all your employees have to take some time to collect yourselves and have some fun before getting ready to take on the next challenge. And in most cases the fourth level is the first one at which you can do that. Being in this kind of holding pattern not only enables you and your key employees to refresh yourselves, it also provides you with time to deal with any internal concerns you may have.
    At the same time, it’s important that you maintain what you’ve fought for and gained up to this point. That’s why your planning at this level should reflect some aggressive objectives and goals, particularly in the areas of training, leadership building, and employee evaluation, as well as a complete evaluation of your processes and what you want them to accomplish—all of which add to making your business a tough competitor as well as a market and profit leader. In fact, if you want your business to continue to be successful, at some point you have to set what your managers and employees may consider to be unreasonable goals and objectives. This is true because if you allow them to stay in their comfort zone rather than challenge them, you will never find out how good your people