Since results on his teams are also defined as care and feeding of his ego, that executive is hiring to his weaknesses, so he continually makes what may ultimately turn out to be garbage-in-garbage-out hiring decisions that can ultimately wreck his ambitions. On other hand, I know another young executive, not nearly as brilliant, but whose hiring dictum may very well get him farther along in life.

The dictum is: Hire leaders who can not only do well in this position but in next position and maybe even position beyond that.

In other words, he hires to his strengths, his inner sense of self-confidence, which allows him to surround himself with people who are smarter and in some ways more capable than he — and so is creating a rising tide of action and results that will further his career in powerful ways.

As Steven Jobs said, "I don't hire people to tell them what to do but to tell me what to do."

Yet hiring people who are capable of supplanting you isn't enough. Do more. Actively develop knowledge, skills and careers of those leaders to give them best possible chance of supplanting you.

An epitaph on a 1680 New England gravestone speaks to this: What I gave, I have. What I spent, I had. What I left, I lost. By not giving it.

That can be an epitaph for failed leaders. By not giving to your leaders, not developing their skills and careers, you lose them, lose opportunity to have their riches enrich you.

Nobody is a success unless others want them to be. And when you have a passionate desire for their success, for helping them improve and achieve their goals, when they know that working on your team will be a defining experience of their career — then you will have people who want like hell for you to be a success.

The decline following departure of "great" leaders indicates that those leaders were most likely control-monsters, commanders not convincers, great at getting jobs done themselves but not challenging others to do them.

And when those others are ignored, they become inept.

So let's take an additional yardstick to our leaders and measure their total value, both when they're there and after they have left. Link that value to deferred compensation, bonuses, stock options for executives and to partially-delayed evaluations for middle managers and supervisors — or whatever.

When leaders define their performance beyond their tenure, they will most likely pay more attention to those two factors that are absolutely necessary for any organization's continued well-being: getting and developing exceptional leaders.

============================= 2004 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

In order to level playing field with large chains, independent hotel needs to embrace Internet and understand that guests want to make their travel arrangements on web. To do this, hotel needs a good web site that reflects their property. It is not enough however just to have web site – it needs to be promoted and advertised to encourage visitors. Once you have your potential guest online you need to be able to sell to him – in same way that you may purchase books, CDs, and even your grocery shopping! The hotel needs to take booking there and then, and, upsell other items such as an evening meal, tickets to local attractions etc. And of course by doing it online you can even sell whilst you sleep!

The question is of course, can a small guesthouse with only five letting rooms afford such a facility? Until recently, answer would have been no. Or, it may have been that you could use a third party system which charged commission, more you sold, more you paid! Programmes such as EUBookings have changed this. This programme allows hotels to pay a small annual fee of £99 & VAT (plus £90 & VAT implementation) for which they can add their availability and rates. The system is totally adaptable so if you insist on guests staying two nights if they stay on Saturday night, it handles it; or, if you have a minimum stay of seven nights it handles it. EUBookings will fulfil needs of small hotelier at a price which is affordable.

It is clear that small hotels and b&b’s have been slower to tap vast potential of Internet. This potential has been demonstrated by budget airlines positively. The larger hotel chains have not been as successful and have their own issues which have created difficulties in their online activities. The independent hotel and b&b does now have a fantastic opportunity to compete on an equal footing with these larger businesses and should aim to take more than their fair share of this emerging travel market.