Possibly the biggest issue, however, is that performance appraisals focus managers attention on precisely the wrong thing: individual people. As W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement, taught a long time ago, company performance often results more from variations in systems than from the individuals doing the work.

Volumes in the series on Lyndon Johnson, including Master of the Senate and The Path Power, describe how Johnson created resources out of nothing and built a substantial power base.

Knowledge is only useful if you do something with it.

So, the three qualities of a workplace that would develop people would be information sharing, investing in the training of the workforce, and giving employees the ability to use their training and information to make decisions.

People clearly want to believe that the world is a just and fair place. It provides them a sense of control and makes them psychologically comfortable. But believing that the world is a just and fair place causes people to not do enough to take care of themselves and to be unprepared for when it isn't so nice. So, people need to understand their tendencies to see the world as just and fair and then be realistic about the actual conditions in which they find themselves.

People need to be ready to have truly "global" careers. Just as companies now face world-wide competition, so, too, do people. Therefore, individuals need to get out in the world more - some large percentage of Americans don't even have a passport - and work in different countries.

I am not sure any of the material in Leadership BS would be helpful for small companies and certainly not their owners. Of course, even owners have bosses and need to worry about keeping their jobs - so Power might be more appropriate.