The purpose of having practice platforms in a small business setting is to create a common language, a shared approach for corporate team building and a clear performance management process that builds leadership skill development and management capability throughout the business.

This is crucial for high performance, as it enables everybody to sing from the same song book. It means everyone is on the same page and that they understand and know what their colleagues are talking about.

The Roman Empire, for instance, would allow its subjects to believe anything they liked, as long as they all spoke Latin. If they didnt, they were dealt with rather harshly.

Common decision-making tools for problem-solving and conflict resolution skills development, combined with an agreed set of self-awareness tools and approaches for leadership development and planning, allow for the easy flow of information that is aligned with the Mission, Vision and Values of the business.

The whole business structure must support leadership development and management skills development from the top down. High performance management in the knowledge worker age is about how we manage people.

In the vast body of management literature, there is a distinction made between leadership and management. The hypothesis is that good managers are not good leaders and vice versa, ala Marcus Buckingham and John Kotter. They say that the roles and competencies associated with the leader and the manager are quite different and distinct.

The distinction made in general is that managers are good at planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, controlling and problem solving. On the other hand, leaders are seen to be good at defining the future, bringing people along and inspiring them to make it all happen, despite the obstacles.

There is no doubt that some business owners are better leaders than they are managers. And some of them are better managers than they are leaders. But it is the combination and the amalgam of the whole that creates a strength-based management environment in the small business.

In the small business, leadership and management are more often than not experienced as co-existent realities, both within particular individuals and dispersed in and through the people throughout every level of the business.

The elements that hold it together in achieving this outcome are the structures that have been put in place to facilitate this originally.

More and more in business today, the requirements for leadership skills development and management capacity must be met at the lowest levels of the hierarchy. The ability for every employee to take responsibility for self-management, self-learning and self-correction is becoming increasingly critical in the knowledge worker age. To do this:

• Personal Mission and Values must be aligned with the business Mission and Values
• Personal decision making must be done within an agreed, common information processing framework and by the use of commonly shared and understood methos of reaching decisions and resolving problems
• Business unit decisions must be aligned with the strategic directions and Vision of the business.

These are the foundational and fundamental common platforms that must be in place in the successful business that allow people to work freely and to achieve high performance and excellence.