"The leader's job is to help people see beyond what the organization is now to what it could become."

In The Achieve Group’s (my first training and consulting company) early years, we were clearly in the training business. Distributing California-based, Zenger-Miller, training programs, we provided a well-designed "hardware" package of video tapes and participant workbooks. The "software" was the training of our Client's own internal support staff and/or managers to train others in their organization following Zenger-Miller's well-scripted leader’s guide.

The Zenger-Miller programs were award winning, highly effective training. They had a solid research base proving that, when used as directed, it could produce dramatic individual behavioral change. But many Clients weren't getting the full benefit of this powerful training. That's because they weren't using it within a larger organization context and improvement process.

So Achieve began years of difficult learning, experimenting, and searching for ways to reposition and support the core training programs within a larger organization improvement effort. We redefined our business. Our purpose statement became "Improving Personal and Organizational Performance." We saw ourselves as needing to provide consulting services that helped Clients put together broad, organization-wide improvement strategies. But that took us far from our core competencies and into the consulting field. We soon found ourselves being drawn into a business in which we had much less experience — generating revenue through billable hours rather than packaged materials.

Eventually an "Implementation Architecture" and supporting services emerged. This allowed us to use the focus of customer service and quality improvement to build a series of executive retreat delivery services and internal coordinator training to support the use of our core training. So we put a broader, strategic implementation framework around our core tactical training. This highly successful process built on Achieve and Zenger-Miller's experience and expertise in packaging complex, dynamic, interactions and human processes and developing internal delivery.

Many companies define their business too narrowly. That means they often miss new market opportunities. Or they don't provide a broader level of service support to their basic products or services. So customers start looking elsewhere.

At the other extreme, some companies define their business too broadly. That often takes them beyond their core competencies into businesses they don't understand. The results are often very expensive (and sometimes fatal) learning experiences. As with so many aspects of life, we have to keep checking our balance for ever-changing conditions.