In order to serve its purpose, a vision has to be a shared vision.

Encourage dissent: Leaders should have associates who have contrary views, who are devil's advocates, "variance sensors" who can tell them the difference between what is expected and what is really happening, between what they want to hear and what they need to hear. There are too many naked emperors running around today.

Walt Disney, of all people, did a good job of describing his own netony. "People who have worked with me say I am 'innocence in action,'" he wrote. "They say I have the innocence and unselfconsciousness of a child. Maybe I have. I still look at the world with uncontaminated wonder."

Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action.

Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.

Unlike top management at Enron, exemplary leaders reward dissent. They encourage it. They understand that, whatever momentary discomfort they experience as a result of being told they might be wrong, it is more than offset by the fact that the information will help them make better decisions.

Almost without exception, members of great groups see themselves as winning underdogs, as a feisty David hurling fresh ideas at a big, backward-looking Goliath. They always have an "enemy."