Following a vision to success.

* BOOKSHELVES ARE CROWDED WITH HOW--TO books full of hints and tricks for performing whatever activity is covered, though they often fail to guide the reader through the complexities of the subject, leaving out many helpful techniques. Peter Cleveland's 50 Steps for Business Success is different.

It starts with the basis for all businesses--the vision of what the owner wants to accomplish--and continues step-by-step through encouragement of employee action based on that vision to continual re-evaluation of the vision with changing market conditions, and it backs up its information with real-life case histories.

Cleveland is a managing partner and senior vice president at Ernst & Young and has more than 30 years of experience coaching companies ranging from small businesses to international conglomerates. Cleveland breaks the book down into individual steps, which he calls "Bites." Each bite is dependent on the bites before it. Bites are broken down into smaller sections such as Leadership, Communication, Team Core Competencies, Revenue Growth, Product Innovation, Expense Reduction, Barriers to Growth, and Process Improvement. The five to seven steps in each section all support that section heading. Often the concepts are illustrated with actual strategies drawn from Cleveland's consulting work.

The starting point for business success, according to Cleveland, is leadership. At various points throughout, Cleveland differentiates between leadership and management. A manager is a person who ensures that business structures and processes are working correctly, but a leader is someone who builds those structures and envisions desired outcomes. Sometimes the role of leader and manager are combined because of firm size, but without leadership, management is ineffective.

The leader's job is three-fold. A leader needs to: 1) decide what needs to be done and how it is to be accomplished; 2) continually react to market conditions, so that the vision is congruent with an ever-changing economy; and, most importantly, 3) make sure his and his employees' efforts support that continually changing vision. The leader isn't a dictator, ramrodding a detailed marketing plan down workers' throats. Nor is the leader a missionary of business, fostering harmony among the various departments at all costs. Instead, a leader is more of a coach of the firm, the one with the initial expertise of accomplishing the vision; the one who identifies the unmet needs of customers and clients; the one who decides the best way of fulfilling the guiding vision; and the one who continually rewrites that vision based on market considerations. The leader's role in the organization can't be overstated. Without a strong leader at the helm, the vision of the firm will be quickly outdated and the firm will be overrun by increased costs and declining sales.

Cleveland also addresses the role of employees in business success at length. Mere management of employees, often in a department such as sales or human resources, is static. The goal of management is to see that rules are followed, budgets are met, and metrics are achieved. Employee action with this kind of encouragement will be limited to the goals of that management. For a successful business, however, employees should actually be striving to fulfill the leader's vision and mission.

To do this, employees must share the mission. Periodic staff meetings keep everyone abreast of vision fulfillment and change. Without broad company knowledge, employees in a rigid departmental structure may inadvertently sabotage this vision to achieve their own individual departmental goals. Instead of rewarding employees for achievement of benchmarks, reviews and bonuses should be based on overall achievement of the leader's vision and employee contribution. When employees share in the vision, their actions aren't guided merely be their job descriptions. Instead, they are guided by and focused on total company success. Employees then become part of that leadership, which typically is the most effective way to achieve a vision.

To maintain performance, a company needs to continually serve its customer and client needs. If the leader doesn't realize this, the company will become stale and will soon go broke for lack of sales. Customers' needs and desires change, sometimes quickly. The guiding vision must change with them, be it with a new product, service, or a reduced price of existing offerings. When customers are satisfied in changing market conditions, the business will succeed. As always, employees must be kept abreast of these changes so that they, too, can continue to stay focused on the vision.

50 Steps for Business Success is not a how-to book for the budding entrepreneur but a collection of pearls of wisdom, backed up by real case studies that every business should follow. Every step in the book builds on the one preceding it, starting with the development of a clear leadership vision to imbuing the firm's employees with that vision, and all of it based on ethical service to clients and customers.