Leadership is not by instinct alone; it is also by design. Great achievers have, time and again, demonstrated the importance of careful planning and clinical execution. That they had the ability to dream and realise those dreams set them apart as leaders amongst fellow men.

	Going By The Book
	Stemming The Rot
	Pay Peanuts, Get Elephants

The most essential quality for a leader is to have a clear vision. He should have the ability to identify the drivers and catalysts of that vision. Having done that, a good leader should create a robust organisation that has the strength and energy to march ahead.

For the leader of an organisation, it typically means having a supportive management and a team that is responsive to the collective goal of the company. Having said that, there should also be a mechanism in place to check effectiveness and motivation at individual levels-a measurement matrix that enables identification of final outputs from the effort and resources that were put in.

A leader must also learn to recognise performance and accomplishments. Each member of the team should be made to feel important at work and given the ownership of a process, however small it maybe.

Rewards, at the right time and in the right context, go a long way in maintaining high levels of enthusiasm and motivation. Often, it is the difference between drudgery and efficiency.

The most important factor for being a successful leader is customer focus. For every vision, there is an end-beneficiary. The customer is the biggest gainer from a corporate culture of excellence. Link each outcome to the needs of the customer and ask whether that is really going to add value. Any outcome that fails this test has to be relegated to the dustbin and the cycle repeated anew.