All the brains and connections in the world won't matter unless you also have the bullheaded determination it takes to get things done.
That resilience is especially crucial for small businesses. As one study of 29 small firms operating in depressed regions of the United States found, some companies are great at making something out of nothing, while others aren't. The difference between success and failure among companies in the study came down to either accepting resource constraints and giving up, or seeing possibilities others didn't.
As you think about your team's leadership qualities---and your own---take seriously that other philosophical nugget, from Woody Allen: "Eighty percent of success is showing up."
Source: Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, in the September 2006 issue of Business 2.0