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One of the biggest risks of being in the leadership position in a big organisation is that no one is going to tell you the truth in an open and honest way. A few leaders are lucky or wise enough to bring in outside consultants to perform this task. Most hire consultants who tell them their baby is beautiful, because that’s the type of information that gets you invited back.

Is it possible to focus too much on ‘leadership’ in business? We think the answer could be ‘yes.’ Seeing leaders as ‘special beings’ risks creating what Henry Mintzberg called ‘leadership apart’: leaders unconnected to their organisations, insulated from conflict, challenge, and debate; and unwitting creators of a culture of conformity and compliance rather than creativity and innovation.

What, you might think, does ‘Zero Tolerance’ – policing that allows no crime or anti-social behaviour to be overlooked – have to do with my business? There are a number of ways in which the principle can be helpful when you’re managing change. As your company develops, you will face a moment when you choose between what you’ve done before and what you might achieve in the future. The easy route is to ‘stay the same’ – but in fact no business ever stays the same, and if you don’t make positive changes at the right moment, the prognosis for your business won’t be good.

One of the difficulties many successful entrepreneurs have when their business grows into a bigger organisation is changing their own mindset from doing everything in the business to delegating work to their staff. We have some guidelines that can help you, or an employee, when struggling to make the transition.

There’s a second stage when your business moves out of the ‘consolidation’ phase. This is when the focus of the leadership group needs to move away completely from day to day operations: they need to become Directors, with their focus on strategic, financial and legal issues – and the second tier of management needs to take over the day-to-day running of the organisation.

Many business owners struggle to make the move from doing things themselves to delegating work to their staff, and they get little guidance on how to do it. It’s a difficult transition and there are often a few problems along the way.

Do you get confused over the distinction between ‘doing’ the job, ‘managing’, and ‘directing’? Here are some distinctions: Doing: Carrying out a deed or action, especially when held responsible for it. Managing: Getting people together to accomplish goals through interpersonal relations, information processing and decision making…

It’s your staff’s job to worry about the detail of getting a job done, devise ways of monitoring day-to-day activities and deal with crises along the way. As director, you must be ‘big picture’, concerning yourself not so much with day-to-day operations, but with where the company is going and where the next big opportunities are coming from.

Ensure your people understand the big picture: they’ll have the information they need to stay on track and you’ll find it easier to direct their efforts without getting ‘stuck in’!